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Tackling climate change is a tough challenge for politicians in democracies. How do you persuade people to make sacrifices now to prevent climate change in the future and remain popular enough to get re-elected? That's the conundrum that the world needs to resolve.

Britain's climate change minister, Ed Miliband, has said he wants a popular movement to push the world's politicians to secure an agreement to reduce emissions. But in the last couple of months British climate campaigners have felt persecuted by the Labour government. There was the police raid on anti-coal campaigners in Nottingham, police attempts to infiltrate the direct action organisation and claims from that police were taking photos of comings and goings at its London headquarters.

In our latest Ethical Man film I travel to Washington for the summit of climate activists. Senior administration members were there in force. They seemed to regard the climate activists in DC as an army of potential ambassadors for President Barack Obama's climate policy - not a rabble of radicals to be infiltrated and neutralised.

It is an interesting contrast. Yesterday I spoke to Ed Miliband about it. .

I met him at the British Embassy in Washington where he has been attending a major international meeting on climate change. The meeting is Mr Obama's attempt to kick start international climate negotiations.

Mr Obama invited ministers from 16 major economies which together are responsible for 80% of the world's emissions. The idea is to get the various parties talking to try and get some momentum going in the run up to the this December.

The Copenhagen Conference really is a big deal. It is where the successor to the Kyoto protocol will be negotiated. The meeting is crucial because many environmentalists believe this will be the last chance the world has to get to grips with reducing emissions if we are to avoid uncontrolled climate change.

What Mr Obama hopes is that the talks I've been following here in Washington will make agreement easier. As I reported on Newsnight last night, the good news is that everyone seemed to agree that they went well. The bad news is that there are still big differences between countries, particularly between the developed and developing world. .

Hopefully, you all saw my latest Ethical adventure on this evening's . If not, you can catch it on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ iPlayer for the next 7 days, and it will be available to watch here tomorrow and up on soon. Meanwhile, if you'd like to find out what happened when I made a pitstop in the Pennsylvania backwoods on my way to Washington, just click play on the video below. I hope you "spread" the word!

Check out our second film here. I'm really pleased with this one. I feel as if the series is really beginning to get to grips with the issues.

What interested me when we went to America was the challenge of motivating an entire society to begin to move towards a low carbon economy. Carbon pricing, the issue we begin to explore here, is, as any reader of my America blog will know, one powerful tool that might begin to achieve this.

The power of pricing is clear from the reaction of the people in our Muskegon town hall meeting. As the film shows, as prices change it really does affect people's behaviour. The problem is that raising prices is not popular. So the big question is will politicians have the courage to introduce such an unpopular but powerful policy?

Indeed, it suggests an even bigger question. Are democratic societies capable of making the short term sacrifices that may be necessary to tackle the long term threat of climate change?

That is what we begin to explore next week as we leave Detroit and head to Washington, with an interesting diversion along the way, as you will see.

As always we are exploring new ways of getting people to watch our stuff. From today we're also putting our Ethical Man films on You Tube. .

And I'm still really keen to know what you think. Do you think carbon pricing is the answer or do you think the whole series is a waste of time?

Write in now!

Phew - the first of our films, finished at last. I hope it speaks for itself. Tell me what you think.