Denial Never Sleeps

Still from Obama's climate change video

In a White House video released on Saturday, President Obama announced he will unveil his second-term vision for fighting climate change in a major speech this Tuesday. More like a short and sappy infomercial, its content echoing the broad strokes released by his administration a week ago, the video has left me with that sinking feeling of too little, too late. Take these peculiarly out-of-touch lines (please):

“We'll need scientists to design new fuels and farmers to grow them. We'll need engineers to devise new sources of energy and businesses to make and sell them. We'll need workers to build the foundation for a clean-energy economy, and we'll need all of our citizens to do our part to preserve God's creation for future generations.”

When I first read them in CBS's story on the video, I was tempted to post them on Facebook, mock-attributing them to George Bush circa 2007. Hardly anyone is bullish on biofuels any more except the relevant agriculture lobbies, and we already have an abundance of increasingly affordable renewable energy sources. Obama himself has done plenty to scale up their utilization, considering.

So if I'm bracing myself for a letdown come Tuesday, surely the ubiquitous Greek chorus of denial – which, by subverting America's capacity for reality-testing and political problem-solving has long since turned climate hawk candidate Obama into climate chicken president – will sit this one out.

Not on your life. Not even on “liberal” cbsnews.com: