Dr. Burton believes that although there are climate skeptics now, they will come around and the necessary change to reduce greenhouse emissions will happen -- likely in something like 50 years. The problem with this scenario is that many irreversible impacts of climate change will have already occurred.

The main difference between now and then is that now we are fuelling the current change, whereas 56 million years ago, it was a natural phenomenon -- although scientists are still not entirely sure what caused it.

The oil industry is used to getting its way without much fuss, but now thousands of citizens, unions, legislators and celebrities have come together to fight for the energy future they want. It has been inspiring, but it also raises an important question: shouldn't every decision about a new energy project face this type of scrutiny?

This campaign pushing dirty fuels wavers between messages. Underneath all those messages, though, is a total refusal to take any responsibility for the fact that burning fossil fuels is actively undermining our life support systems.