Why isn't Obama talking about climate change?

I've been thinking a lot about David Roberts's argument that the administration's response to the Deepwater oil spill shows it's not committed to pushing energy legislation this year. "If he was looking for an opportunity to drive home the clean energy message, this was it," Roberts writes. "The Katrina of fossil fuels. Yet all he's done is blandly reaffirm his support for offshore drilling. I haven't heard a word about clean energy alternatives or, God forbid, efficiency, which if pursued seriously could save more oil than offshore rigs could produce, at a net savings rather than a cost, and with the added bonus feature of not occasionally leaking out and destroying entire American ecosystems and industries."

You can see this two ways. The first is that the Deepwater spill is best understood as a national tragedy, and until the crisis phase is over, it would be both political suicide and simply indecent to subsume it into a larger argument about clean energy, oil dependence and climate change.

On the other hand, a five-degree centigrade rise in global temperatures will be an unbelievable global catastrophe. It will dwarf the devastation caused by the spill. And the responsible thing for Obama to do is to explain that: Dependence on fossil fuels ensures oil spills, and it also ensure a warming climate, and we need to understand the Deepwater spill as not just a tragedy, but a predictable outcome, and a harbinger of much worse. That is not politicizing a tragedy. That is being honest about what caused it, and what it means.

That said, this doesn't need to happen on Day 3. The larger argument about the need to wean ourselves off of oil can be made in a week. Allowing time for grieving and emergency response does not mean a call to action can't follow. But if one doesn't follow, then Roberts is right, and it's a sign that the White House doesn't want a discussion over oil dependence this year.