One reader asked me this week how global warming made it to the center of the political agenda and why it has become such an incredible success story, despite the real questions being raised about the science underpinning it all.

One of the things that occurred to me during my evening with one of Al Gore’s ambassadors who are spreading the word about the Climate Project is that the general public doesn’t really understand climate change. While global warming is a fact, the underlying causes are so complex and wide ranging that it is relatively easy to massage the phenomenon into one seemingly coherent message, package it and sell it to the masses. You can do that successfully, provided you’re first to market and the “global-warming-Kyoto-is-the-solution” product has been around for over decade and its critics are way behind the curve in presenting a cogent and above all compelling counter case. And while many on the right still rejoice over Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, one has to wonder where climate change would be on the agenda today had the former veep captured the White House that year. So a lot can be attributed to timing and marketing.

It is also important to note that following socialism’s collapse in the 1990s there was no longer a defining issue that separated the left and right. There was debate, discussion over many things but an ideological split was largely absent. And while conservatives were quick to jump on terror, jihadist violence was not an entirely natural fit for the left. The environment was a far better match and a highly necessary one: the emergence of green parties all over the western world heralded the end of the unified electoral power of the left and it is no coincidence that it is Al Gore who has worked so hard to go green. After all, it was Ralph Nader that cost him the 2000 election, not George Bush.

It is also important to note that an environmental platform has not been tested electorally. Americans will no doubt cast their next ballot with Iraq and budget reforms in mind and the question is really if Canadians believe that carbon credits are to be the defining piece of their lives next time they’re asked to vote. I certainly do not think that will be the case. Gore’s ambassador, a devout Green Party man was not that confident in his own politics and expressed the hope that Stephen Harper as a conservative would be the man to do the unthinkable and deliver a package of environmental reforms. And my neighbor, an equally green man, did not hesitate to state during question time that all change is cultural and that there was no way he was going to trade in his truck for a low-carbon micro-hybrid. Add to that some of the confusing comments from one lady in the room about regulating ‘animal gas emissions’ and I think it is fair to say that however well marketed and positioned, global warming is too fragmented and an insufficiently unifying issue politically to enable realignments that change the electoral landscape. For now, it has momentum, the question is if it will last.

More likely is that that various parties of the right and left will – forced by the excellent marketing power behind it all – will frame policies that are palatable to the public and industry at large and that will be financable. The evening with the Gore ambassador did in the end not raise my concerns over an alarmist and dogmatic movement, it actually revealed global warming for what it really is: open to interpretation, ready for compromise and not nearly as dramatic as some would have us believe.

NOTE: And what better example of global warming’s ambiguity than to let a powerful voice from the left inform us on the consequences of implementing Kyoto:

Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Autoworkers Workers, does not expect any government to try to implement Kyoto according to current deadlines.

"It would be devastating for the whole community, anybody that signed on," he said. "It's not even a remote possibility. No prime minister in any one of the parties in the House of Commons is going to bring in any kind of regulation that says we have to do that. It would be suicidal for our economy.

Never thought I would approvingly quote a union leader, but I guess it underlines my argument.