In the US, opposition to the Climate Bill has shown just how hard it can be to get popular support for much-needed measures to put economies on track to head off the worst effects of climate change.

The US model of democracy within which President Obama must work is itself partly to blame. As a recent op-ed from the UK Observer Newspaper suggests:

“The structure of the US Senate makes the passage of complex legislation difficult… One hundred senators have the power to halt legislation…

…Last week in Houston, 3,500 people, many of them energy industry workers, attended an anti-climate bill programme. More are expected in 19 states in coming weeks. This atmosphere does not tolerate complexity. Yet everything about climate change, from science to policy, resists simplification”.

At our February 2009 meeting in New Delhi on Democracy and Sustainability it was very clear that climate change is not yet a major concern for most Indian voters. And yet, if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report is even half-way right, climate change is likely to generate extraordinarily profound impacts on entire societies.

The real risk is that it will be poorer and more marginalised people who bear the brunt of the negative social impacts of climate change. Social justice and sustainable development both demand powerful steps to head off these risks.

The conundrum gets to the heart of some of the weaknesses both of democratic decision-making and of sustainable development approaches that ring-fence existing economic growth models, seeking social and environmental innovation at the edges rather than systemic change.

Just as pressing is a need to find ways to bridge the divide between scientific evidence, and the headline-grabbing simplifications of supercharged policy debate and activism.