The 7 Big Questions Obama Faces Tonight - CBS News

If all that crude bobbing around in the Gulf had never leaked out, but had instead been captured, refined, and burned in combustion engines across the country, it would still be heating the planet and causing a very different (and more gruesome) type of catastrophe. It's unclear whether Obama will try to make this connection or not-or whether he'll push for a price on carbon. As I noted yesterday, different administration aides seem to have different views on whether he'll go this far. (That's not surprising: As Eric Pooley's new book The Climate War details, White House advisers like Rahm Emanuel tend to think global warming is a losing cause.) But at this point, the only way the Senate is going to pass a bill that starts capping greenhouse-gas emissions is if Obama makes a powerful case for doing so. It's in his hands now.