> Do you refuse to fly if you are "against fossil fuels"?

This is a false equivalence. Being an fossil consumer is very very different from directly working in the fossil industry. Consumers will use whatever is most convenient or available. It's up to the industry to come up with feasible alternatives, and air travel will be some of the last fossil usage to transition. You picked the hardest end of the scale to setup a straw man. Why not ask "Do you ask your utility if there's a 100% clean energy option?" That's on the lower end of the energy transition difficulty curve for consumers, but it's still not relevant to the argument I was making (working in the old energy industry).

> What makes you against fossil fuels vs being neutral if you have a stance where you believe externalities should be taxed but that outright bans are too destructive? I consider pro carbon-tax to be a neutral position. I consider "anti fossil fuels" a position of wanting to ban it regardless of externalities being priced in.

It seems you and I have wildly different opinions about what constitutes neutral vs anti, and I worry that your definition is mostly informed by pro-fossil interests. Anti-fossil people aren't zealots or a cult. I'm only anti-fossil because of the reason you stated for being neutral: externalities are not being priced in. If they were, I wouldn't be anti-fossil.

Millions of other workers in clean energy and climate science have the same attitude as me. We're only in this fight because fossil fuels are killing people, so we're stepping up to help stop that. If fossil fuels weren't so destructive (e.g. carbon taxes offset the damages), we could all go do something else.

> No, being incapable of critical thought makes you susceptible to propaganda.

I seems like this is another argument assuming anti-fossil people are zealots incapable of critical thought. Having a position on a topic does not mean you have stopped thinking critically. Often, it means you have already thought critically and have decided on your opinion, and that you simply haven't come across a convincing enough argument to move you away from your current position.

I'm anti-fossil because I've reached the conclusion that fossil fuels are becoming more and more destructive for society, so we should make strides to curtail their usage. There's totally a chance that something could come along to alter my conclusion, but it hasn't happened yet.

This resonates with me. I was an activist for ~10 years (for a different issue). Me and every activist I met stepped up because of the need (vs innate interest). Personally, I would have rather been doing pretty much anything else.

Thank you for stepping up.

Because the status quo is that fossil fuels are allowed without the externalities being taxed. A position that moves towards less fossil fuel use is anti-fossil fuel, although less so than one that desires an outright ban.