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    “Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices. In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way.”  -Barack Obama, in “Ready for the Fight: Rolling Stone Interview with Barack Obama,” April 25, 2012

From April 22-26 there were a series of activities on the climate crisis in Washington, D.C. organized primarily by religiously-based groups. One took place on April 23rd in an auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building, right next to the White House. Several Obama administration officials, including Heather Zichal, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, spoke to and answered questions from about 100 people from a variety of groups and parts of the country.

One question, asked several times, was if President Obama was going to be speaking out on the climate crisis in coming months. He has not been doing so, by and large, ever since the December, 2009 international climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.