Ken Caldeira liked plenty of things about working in finance in the early 1980s. He had studied applied science as an undergrad, and developing software on Wall Street kept his problem-solving skills sharp. But however interesting he found the day-to-day work, Caldeira couldn’t escape the thought that in the grand scheme of things, all he was really doing was “helping rich people get a little richer.” The job was “microlevel interesting, macrolevel meaningless.”

So around 1985, when Caldeira started seeing early news reports about global warming caused by greenhouse gases—which was already having a measurable effect on Antarctica’s ice—he was primed to see it as a mission. “I thought, if modern civilization is transforming the very physical environment in which that civilization exists, that seems like something worth working on and getting people to deal with,” he remembers. In short order he’d left finance and enrolled in a doctorate in atmospheric sciences.

Caldeira has studied climate change ever since, now at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford. In fact, he’s pretty famous for it, especially as a reluctant proponent of studying the possibility of geoengineering. But that whole “getting people to deal with it” thing? That hasn’t turned out like he thought it would.

It’s been 30 years since those frightening news reports caught Caldeira’s attention, and arguably no country in the world has adequately dealt with climate change. This week, world leaders descended on Paris in a last ditch effort to reverse course and limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius—a goal that is almost certainly already impossible. Meanwhile, the world has officially hit 1 degree of warming and all the predictions are coming true. Ice sheets and glaciers are vanishing, the oceans are acidifying, island nations are drowning. Adaptation, not mitigation, is the new goal.

Caldeira and other climate scientists used to think their work was key to stopping this dystopian future from coming to pass. But increasingly, they’ve realized that climate science barely matters at all in the fight against climate change. “I started out thinking that it was all about information, and if we only got the right information to the right people, then the right things would happen,” Caldeira says. “And then you develop the information, and nothing changes.”

Faced with the depressing reality that their years studying climate change have done almost nothing to stop it, climate scientists like Caldeira are turning to new strategies to make a difference—and often they have more to do with politics and psychology than atmospheric chemistry.

Investing in the Future

For many climate scientists, it’s hard to admit that facts—even the most alarming ones—haven’t convinced the US political establishment to act. “I have felt a decreasing confidence that doing science makes a difference,” says Eric Steig, a climate scientist at the University of Washington. “I don’t think we need more facts to change people’s minds. The facts are pretty much in,” and they have been for decades. “It’s not about information,” Caldeira believes now. “It’s about political and economic power.” And the people who hold that power are generally pretty invested in maintaining the status quo that’s worked out so well for them—fossil fuels and all.

Take two studies published this week on the structure of the climate denial movement. The thing that the most powerful denialist voices have in common? It’s not an honest misunderstanding of the science. It’s not a long view of the Earth’s climate history and all the upheavals it contains. It’s not measured critiques of the shortcomings of climate models. It’s money—specifically from Exxon-Mobile and the Koch family.

When Republican politicians began denying climate change, “we were feeling like, oh, they’re irrational, they’re ignoring all of this information,” Caldeira says. But now the scales have fallen from his eyes. “They’re extremely rational, but their incentive structure is toward getting campaign contributions and getting reelected.” They need that oil money for next year’s campaign. Making sure the Earth is still livable in 2100 just isn’t a priority.

And when you’re dependent on oil money, Caldeira’s advice about how to cheaply switch the U.S. to renewable energy holds a particularly paltry amount of sway. “The whole things seems so crazy. We’re going to have to make this transition off of fossil fuels anyway”—since eventually, we will run out of them, he says. “We could cause all this destruction first and then do it, or we could do it now. Why are we choosing the destruction?” Well, because oil companies are spending a lot of money trying to forestall that transition, and at least some of our politicians have let themselves be bought.

A New Role for Scientists

Climate change, the defining scientific issue of the late 20th century, has become the defining political issue of the 21st. But that doesn’t mean climate scientists no longer have a role to play—even though that new role can sometimes be uncomfortable.

When the case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was on its way to the Supreme Court to try to force the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants, a colleague approached atmospheric scientist David Battisti about writing an amicus brief outlining the current state of climate science. “I said no. I just want to do science,” he remembers.

But when he took a look at the federal court decision, which had ruled against the regulation, he was horrified. Two of the three judges had, to his eyes, willfully misinterpreted climate science, blowing the field’s uncertainty out of proportion to avoid requiring regulatory action. “It was so unethical,” says Battisti. “It became clear to me that this was completely a political decision.” After that, it didn’t take him long to get to work on the brief for the Supreme Court. It worked. Five justices found that greenhouse gases should be regulated as pollutants, and the case provides the backbone of the Obama’s administration recent plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.

Ray Pierrehumbert, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Oxford, has added an optimistic touch to his outreach, even as he tries to engage directly with people’s political ideologies. “I have tried to shift some of my advocacy work into helping people understand that we’re not talking about freezing in the dark” if the world weans itself off fossil fuels, he says. “I think conservatives, especially in the US, need to understand that there are huge business opportunities in decarbonization.” Rather than arguing about climate science, he says, conservatives and liberals should be arguing about whether the best road to a carbon-zero future involves free market forces or more regulation.

Caldeira, for his part, has testified before Congress, been on White House panels, contributed to international reports, even advised Bill Gates on climate change. But just as in his finance days, he’s grown tired of working with the rich and powerful. “I have more of a voice than 99.9 percent of the people who are concerned about this issue, and I still feel like a little grain of sand that has barely any impact whatsoever,” he says. Now, he’s focusing more on trying to shifting public opinion, in hopes of changing what’s considered socially acceptable when it comes to carbon emissions. (Soon enough, he hopes, you’ll be embarrassed to own a car with a tailpipe.) “If the average person changes, then the politicians will need to follow, because that’s the way they get reelected.” That’s the beauty of democracy, Caldeira says: Someday, the rich and powerful will have to answer to the rest of us.