Why don't people want to help one another?

Recently, at a conference, a woman in the audience asked me, "why don't you advocate helping others as a message for policy change?" She was referring to the absence of altruism or saving the planet for less fortunate when referring to climate policy. Such as, "we must enact strong pollution limits to protect those south of the equator populations who will be hurt most by global warming, including the impoverished children of the third world."
It seems the Obama Administration is having similar problems messaging health care with the "30 million people don't have health insurance" argument. If they're going to get beyond the "nobody's coming after grandma" argument, they'll have to replace it with something stronger to enact change.
Both arguments, no matter how well intentioned, seem to fall flat. It might be the "dumped" mentality that the US audience seems to hold at the moment. That, "well, I'm not sure I want to go out on a date (or a limb)" for anybody right now.
Or it could be the messenger. The Pope has been using the moral obligation frame on climate for quite a while now, and we have yet to see the Catholic audience rise up and demand GHG limits from their governments, although the Pope certainly gets a lot of press whenever he issues an encyclical or a new edict. So if His Holiness hasn't been effective enough to use the altruism frame with his loyal audience, what chance do we have? What chance does Obama et al have?
The answer, and this is untested, may lie in how do we help the collective "we." How does insuring 30 million Americans help the costs of the rest of us? By making a larger pool of users who can access preventative care lower the costs of big ticket producedures? How does climate policy help the health of the developed as well as the undeveloped world? By not creating mass exodi of starving, homeless populations swarm the borders of unstable nations that might easily convert these desperate people into a militant revolution that the developed nations must quell?
Watch the debate change over the next few weeks as first health care and then climate come to the US Senate for votes.