This December, environmentalists around the world pinned their hopes on the greatly anticipated U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen; an attempt to reach a binding international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But even before the talks started, enthusiasm waned as countries quibbled over a series of underwhelming promises. Sure enough, disappointment reigned when the outcome yielded scant progress: a vague, 12-paragraph accord that reiterated a set of goals with no real plans to achieve them.

Domestically, the prospects of combating climate change look no better. The Senate seems poised to tie President Obama’s hands by forming a brick wall of resistance against the cap-and-trade bill up for vote this year, even though it offers only a paltry three percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 (the European Union was willing to go as high as 30 percent). Even Democratic senators have lined up in opposition to the President, with their sentiments summed up by Sen. Kent Conrad: “Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects.”

Indeed, with an economy only barely reemerging from disaster, opponents of the legislation are sure to lambaste any form of carbon taxation for costing jobs and stifling growth. But in reality, the economic crisis is nothing but a smokescreen for the actual political reason causing Congress to keep whiffing on this issue: only 36 percent of Americans attribute global warming to humans.

The natural instinct this statistic brings out in climate policy advocates is a corrective one–teach the science better and teach it more–but unfortunately, such efforts have proven inadequate. It is time for environmentalists to come to grips with the deeply-rooted intractability of the public’s view of climate change. After years of scientific consensus on virtually indisputable evidence, scores of publicity campaigns and a president who proclaimed the dangers of global warming while riding a wave of popularity into the White House, the American public still does not get it.

And it never will. Environmentalists can never convince the public of the exigency of reducing emissions because, at its core, this debate is not about the facts. British columnist George Monbiot called the Copenhagen conference “a battle between two world views,” and a person’s world view is a difficult thing to change. Certain political factions have made it clear that they cherish indiscriminate pollution as an unalienable right. No amount of physics and chemistry and data will change that. And by excoriating environmentalists for conspiring to trample freedoms and smother economies, they have drawn enough support to pose an indelible obstruction, stopping climate progress in its tracks.

That is why it is time for a paradigm shift in the climate change conversation–an environmental audible. If the American people will not make economic sacrifices to hedge against global warming, they must be convinced that they will not have to, or better yet, that actions will reap benefits.

See tomorrow’s Daily for part two of our response to the Copenhagen Conference.