So Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, and you've got to say he deserves it.

His fellow winners at the IPCC may have done much of the spade work, but it is Gore who has in eighteen short months done more than anyone to turn climate change from a fringe issue into the defining concern of the age.

His film may have contained a few minor errors, as helpfully pointed out by some mining industry-funded critics with too much time on their hands (BTW - in the interests of balance when we do we get a court case on The Great Global Warming Swindle? That I'd like to see). But the crux of his argument remained so strong that he was able to almost single-handedly shift global public opinion.

He has mobilised the global left around a threat that always had more to do with social justice than drowning polar bears and, perhaps more impressively, reached out to many of his erstwhile opponents on the right and made them realise there is an impregnable economic and security case for tackling global warming.

In short, Gore deserves all the plaudits currently heading his way and if any pedants wish to question whether campaigning against climate change is worthy of a peace prize they should assess the latest global warming predictions and ask if droughts in the subcontinent will do anything to ease tensions between nuclear India and Pakistan, if the US can ever secure the Mexican border as water shortages begin to bite, and if the European Union can hold itself together as people migrate North to avoid a sweltering Med.

If such imaginative feats remain beyond them, they could always get a firsthand glimpse of the future and parachute themselves into Darfur and the world's first climate change war.

And yet, just as Gore's profile and influence reaches yet another peak there are worrying signs that his strategy for addressing climate change is beginning to look both overly simplistic and almost alarmingly misguided.

Ever since the release of An Inconvenient Truth Gore has consistently argued that climate change is principally a moral issue; that we have an ethical responsibility to both future generations and the developing countries that will bear the brunt of the damage to tackle the problem.

This argument was crystallised in Gore's response to his new award, which saw him proclaim that, "The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

Now maybe I'm being unfair; maybe I'm reading too much into what is meant to be little more than an oratorical flourish, but to me this sounds like a load of meaningless New Age nonsense.

There is undoubtedly a moral case for not destroying the planet but Gore's position sounds like the very embodiment of the treehugging school of thought that has done both him and the environmental movement so much harm.

If you just analyse the logic of Gore's statement for a moment it quickly falls apart.

First up it is easy to understand why Gore is a bit disillusioned with conventional politics, but to declare the "climate crisis is not a political issue" is still truly bizarre. My dictionary defines politics as "the complex or aggregate of relationships of people in society, especially those relationships involving authority or power", and if that hasn't got plenty to do with the climate crisis I'm not sure what has.

Of course, Gore is talking about politics in the narrower sense - "of or relating to the state, government, the body politic, public administration, policy making, etc" - but again this surely has everything to do with the climate crisis. It is after all governments, politicians and policy makers that for so long ignored the warnings about climate change and are even now failing to deliver the legislation and tax frameworks that would correct the economic externalities associated with carbon emissions and enable the transition to a low carbon economy.

But Gore ignores all this, ignores the capacity of governments and politicians to drive change and create the environment in which low carbon businesses, technologies and lifestyles can prosper (something he once must have believed in), and instead argues climate change is a "moral and spiritual" issue to be laid at the feet of everyone.

Like so many politicians' statements this idea, that climate change is a moral struggle for the individual to face, is partially true and apparently reassuring - until you try to work out what it means.

The premise that climate change can be tackled if we all do our bit, if we were all just the little bit more moral, is easy to succumb too as it implies that all is required is a slight shift in our internal ethical equations to solve the problem. But when you think about it the idea that all that is required for those in the developed world to live a low carbon lifestyle is a "moral" desire to be better people is simply absurd.

The other problem with Gore's analysis is that the flip side of his statement is that it would be immoral not to attempt to cut your carbon footprint, and as soon as you get into questions of immorality you are opening up a whole can of philosophical worms. 

How for instance do you work out the morality of working in the oil industry when you have a family to support? What about the morality of commuting to work, or the morality of keeping the heating on for an elderly relative? Is it good or evil to try and ensure your kids have the same foreign holidays as their classmates, or come to think of it is it right or wrong to fly around the world to raise awareness of climate change?

In a low carbon world all these things are wrong and arguably immoral, but in the current economic and social framework you could argue it is also immoral not to do these things.

There are moral issues surrounding climate change, but these are at the macro-economic level of whether it is right that the developed world's current prosperity will cause untold harm to developing world countries and future generations. To try and argue climate change is a moral issue at the individual level, to imply people are being immoral by doing the same things as everyone else does and failing to act, is only going to alienate everyone bar the hairshirt environmentalists.

Of course, everyone can and should do their bit to help tackle climate change, but without any of the enabling technologies, infrastructure and legislation in place individual action alone will never be enough.

Disaster can only be avoided with massive changes at the economic and infrastructure levels of society and these are things that can only be achieved by politicians and business leaders. They may make these decisions quicker under pressure from the rest of the population, but this pressure is unlikely to be felt until it is already too late - just witness Australians' attitude to climate change shifting only as drought bites. Consequently, climate change is, and will remain a political issue.

Climate change will not be defeated by us all being a bit nicer and more moral, it will only be curbed by the realisation that cutting carbon is an economic necessity, by people realising there is money to be made in providing the necessary products and infrastructure, and by politicians legislating to protect the long term national interest rather than their own political skins.

I don't mean to be pessimistic, but if as Gore suggests climate change can only be curbed if we are able to "lift global consciousness to a higher level", then history indicates that we are pretty much screwed.