For much of the past three decades, public discussion about climate change was dominated by two questions: was it really happening, and did we need to do anything about it?
Those questions consumed endless amounts of political attention, media airtime and public energy.
They seldom come up in the conversation today.
The central questions are no longer whether the climate is changing or whether the global economy should decarbonise. They are how quickly the transition can occur, how it will be funded, what technologies should be used, and how the costs and benefits should be shared.
This is a big shift, but one that has happened with remarkably little reflection on the debate that preceded it.
There has been no real moment of reckoning with the fact that many of the arguments used to resist action proved to be wrong, exaggerated or based on a profound misunderstanding, if not wilful denial of the evidence.
Nor has there been much acknowledgement of what was lost while those arguments occupied the public square: policy continuity, investment certainty, institutional capability and, most importantly, time.
This is not an argument for the public shaming of climate deniers and renewable transition naysayers, tempting though that is. Democratic societies must allow people to question prevailing ideas. Scientific consensus also evolves and experts should always be open to scrutiny.
But scrutiny is not the same as manufacturing doubt.
For years, climate scientists were often presented in public debate as one side of a controversy. Their science was measured against the opinions of commentators who had little or no relevant expertise, and whose voices in many cases were bolstered by organisations with a direct commercial or political interest in frustrating change.
The effect was to make a mature body of scientific evidence appear unsettled, and it was maddeningly successful.
Australia’s climate continues to warm. Extreme weather events have become more frequent, and the risks to natural and human systems are steadily, demonstrably increasing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also consistently warned that delayed action narrows the range of available options, increases reliance on more disruptive measures and locks in yet more emissions and infrastructure needs.
Australia is now trying to undertake a major transformation of its energy system while replacing ageing infrastructure, expanding transmission, balancing affordability and maintaining reliability. This would have been challenging regardless of the operating environment. But the task would almost certainly be less pressured had Australia achieved greater policy stability and begun building the necessary infrastructure, supply chains and community confidence earlier.
That is not to say every climate policy proposed in the past was correct. Many were imperfect. Some were poorly designed, inadequately explained or insensitive to the people and communities most impacted by them.
The lesson is more fundamental: when an issue is technically complex and the consequences of delay so profound, scientific evidence should carry more weight than speculation, vibes and opinions.
Expertise does not make someone infallible. But it matters. A climate scientist who has spent decades studying atmospheric systems is not simply another participant in an opinion contest. Nor is an energy-system planner’s professional output equivalent to the click-bait musings of a social media personality or TV commentator.
We have become accustomed to treating every public question as though it contains two equally credible sides. Sometimes they do. Frequently, they do not.
This distinction matters beyond climate policy.
Society is confronting other challenging questions, about artificial intelligence, biotechnology, public health, critical infrastructure and environmental threats. In each case, commercial interests, political motivations and digital platforms can inflate baseless claims long before the evidence is properly laid out or understood. The damage can be substantial and difficult to reverse.
The answer is not blind faith in institutions. Trust must be earned through transparency, openness about uncertainty and willingness to accept and correct mistakes.
But healthy scepticism should be directed at those challenging expert consensus at least as much as the experts themselves. Who is making the claim? What is their relevant expertise (if any)? What evidence supports it? Who profits if the public believes it?
The energy transition still deserves rigorous debate. Communities are entitled to question projects that affect their land, landscapes and livelihoods. Consumers are entitled to ask what the transition will cost, and what are the trade-offs. Governments and developers should be challenged when their planning or engagement falls short.
But those are legitimate questions about how to decarbonise fairly and effectively, not about whether the underlying problem exists.
Perhaps the most useful response to the climate debates of the past is therefore not to demand an apology. It is to insist on better collective judgment.
We should be more discerning about who we listen to, more alert to the interests behind public debates and more willing to distinguish genuine expertise from manufactured authority.
The cost of getting that distinction wrong is not merely a poorer public debate. Sometimes, it is decades lost that we cannot recover.
