In the rush of day-to-day politics, there is little time to consider underlying assumptions or to carefully check facts. The long-term consequences of not stepping back to consider the broader picture can be very serious. This is the case with the environmental debate today. For example, Australia has committed itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions; a project that will impose considerable costs on consumers, companies and the community. Environmental groups would like the government to go even further by imposing a carbon tax on greenhouse gas producers. As Barry Maley shows in Ethics and Ecosystems many of the claims about greenhouse gas and other environmental problems are unproven and unlikely to be true. Perceptions of an impending environmental calamity are often the product of wild exaggeration and distortion by some of the less scrupulous sections of the environmental movement. The issues raised by this go beyond considerations of the ethics of political activism. It is necessary to examine why environmentalists hold the views they do; why they feel that their cause is so important that misleading and deceiving the public on environmental matters is a justifiable tactic.