A new politics of climate change for recessionary times.

Even before the financial markets fell into cardiac arrest and Dr. Paulson prescribed his $700-billion adrenaline shot, the economic crisis had become the only issue that really mattered in the presidential election. Sure, the McCain camp was talking about some other crucial stuff—sex education for kindergartners, porcine cosmetology—but Iraq, health care, and especially climate change were and still are lost in the economic glare. That's understandable, but for Americans who began the year feeling hopeful that climate action was finally becoming inevitable, it has been a sobering summer. And now there's fear that a deep recession could drive global warming off the next president's agenda altogether.

The evidence of impending climate catastrophe keeps piling up, and both candidates support a declining cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet they rarely find time to talk about it. (Each gave the subject a polite nod during the Clinton Global Initiative.) Obama and McCain know that at this moment of deep economic distress, warnings about future climate impacts aren't going to help them carry Ohio. That much has been clear since June, when $4-a-gallon gasoline helped snuff the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act and the nation's hopes and dreams began shifting from save the planet to "drill, baby, drill." Opponents of Lieberman-Warner claimed it would jack up energy costs, throw people out of work, and kill the U.S. economy; supporters responded that its impact wouldn't be that bad. Not that bad is not that good a strategy, and green leaders realized then that if they were ever going to break the political logjam, they had to drive home a more optimistic economic message.

Today, that message is coming into focus, and what looked like obstacles to climate action in June may soon be seen as opportunities. Hard times didn't stop Reps. John Dingell and Rick Boucher from releasing a long-awaited climate bill this week, and hard times could actually help propel the climate debate next year, because the steps needed to deal with global warming can also help deal with America's shaky economy and dependence on foreign oil—and even raise money for jobs and infrastructure. Obama's climate adviser, Jason Grumet, mused about the possibilities at an energy conference held recently at Harvard. "To the extent that climate change [legislation] is the next big American stimulus package," he said, "that brings forward a different kind of dialogue."

How does a climate bill become a stimulus package? It begins with our first national debate on energy supply in 30 years. The fossil-fuel brigade may have seized the upper hand with Newt Gingrich's "drill here, drill now, pay less" slogan, but the enviros have an argument of their own: reduce demand through energy efficiency; diversify supply through development of solar, wind, and geothermal energies; and build a clean economy that cuts fuel costs and creates hundreds of thousands of green jobs—steelworkers making wind turbines; carpenters retrofitting buildings; maybe even pipefitters laying the lines needed to capture and store CO₂ from coal-fired power plants. In other words, Americans can move toward energy security and shore up the crumbling economy by doing what it takes to solve the climate crisis.

That's the case Al Gore made in his July 17 speech in Washington, D.C., and repeated at the Democratic Convention in Denver the night Obama accepted the nomination. But when it came time for Obama's address, the candidate mentioned the climate crisis only in passing and went much harder on clean energy and green jobs: "I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy—wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced."

Say hello to Obama's Trojan horse—a climate policy hidden inside an energy-and-economic policy. Obama takes Gore's energy trifecta, lops off the climate message, and stores it in the belly of the beast while energy independence and economic renewal drive the contraption forward. The tactic was on display in Tuesday night's presidential debate, when both candidates agreed that clean energy investments could revive the economy. Obama responded to a question about climate change by emphasizing jobs: "The new energy economy," he said, "can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades. And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment." Climate activists were thrilled to hear Obama call clean energy his "top priority," even if he did so "because you're paying $3.80 here in Nashville for gasoline," not because the arctic ice cap is wasting away. This is not a dumb tactic; the man wants to get elected, and until the Wall Street meltdown gave him a boost, his support was shaky among working-class voters who have more immediate problems than the fate of the Earth—so it just makes sense for him to emphasize job creation rather than planetary salvation. And Obama is not the only one talking this way. Former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta, a supremely well-connected wonk who runs the Center for American Progress, says he's hearing the Trojan horse idea "from my friends in the environmental community. They are frustrated. They've been preaching to empty pews for so long, they think maybe if they change churches someone will show up."