In 2019, we have more than 50 years of data, analysis and Al Gore PowerPoint presentations to convince anyone who's paying attention: our planet is getting way too hot way too fast and our dirty habits are to blame.

But for all the science on their side, environmentalists are still about as popular as a Brexiter in Europe. In some ways, that's not really surprising.

We're the doomsayers, the desk-flippers, the people in hard hats announcing the fire drill at work. It would be so much more convenient to stay in the warm soupy 23 degrees of the office than trudge out into the bitter morning, shoulder to shoulder with that downstairs department you never make eye contact with in the lift.

Better if the damn safety officers were mistaken. That smoke was probably just leftover from the rave party at morning tea. And how much protection will a plastic hardhat afford in a fire anyway? Who put these lunatics in charge?

Yes, it's easy to be a sceptic. (I'd know, I'm a journalist.) But lumping environmentalists in with the enduring image of the self-righteous trust-fund hippy driving their car to a fossil fuel protest isn't just unfair. It's dangerous.

When we can't dismiss or argue our way through an idea, we start to look at the person behind it.

To that end, scores of thrilling conspiracy theories have now been penned about some of the world's most respected scientists. And, in the past six months, as millions of students took to the streets to demand action on climate change, politicians started openly ridiculing school children.

Environmentalism has done a lot in recent years to turn its image around from some light tree hugging and hacky sack into a slick sustainability agenda more palatable to the masses and big business. But we need only look at our latest election result to see how easily Australia can still shrug it off.

For all its nail-biting urgency, the millions in lost tourism revenue, the untapped boom in solar power at our fingertips, the drowning islands on our doorstep, a decent amount of people still think it's safer to hedge their bets on the prospect of Andrew Bolt proving 97 per cent of world's scientists wrong than to back those pushing even modest change.

Frankly, it's starting to feel personal.

International studies have shown that even those in favour of green reforms are less inclined to act on it for fear of being tarred with the same kale-stained brush as environmentalists. Others suggest some men still think of going green as "womanly". (And it's always worth noting that environmentalists are still routinely murdered around the world)

While I might share some level of disdain for these so-called "eco-frauds" we hear so much about, the ones who rail against plastic bags in the supermarket queue while buying an organic face wash packed with mircobeads, who use campaigns as posturing and scream at us from the margins of Tumblr, they're not the people at the heart of this movement.

Like feminists - and conservatives - environmentalists are often mistaken for the radicals gathering at their fringes.

But the greenies I know are scientists poring over decades of meticulous research, and people in third world slums campaigning for solar power to light their homes. They're activists putting their lives on the line to save an endangered possum from the teeth of a bulldozer, Indigenous people fighting to hold onto their land and farmers trying to win back their water rights from another big mining company.

This is not about one kind of person or sensitivity or lifestyle. And while the turnaround needed might be radical, at this point with the house well and truly on fire, environmentalism is undoubtedly the most conservative option.

Sceptics would have us believe ourselves hypocrites unless we're living in a solar-powered hut somewhere, entirely removed from the high-waste, coal-burning society we hope to transform, that we can be ignored until we can afford to drive a Tesla.

That's not how change works. And every time we come together in our millions to demand the science be given greater standing in policy than corporate donor interests, we prove them wrong.

But I'll hand over to Nigel our spokesturtle now to explain further. I'm needed at another fire drill.