KEY POINTS:
For all the noise on the campaign trail about the war in Iraq, the perilous state of the United States economy and hot issues like immigration and soaring fuel costs, the coming tsunami that is global warming has so far hardly surfaced.
Former Vice-President Al Gore is agitating
to raise awareness. His Alliance for Climate Protection that intends to spend US$300 million ($376.7 million) to force political action on climate change is in stark contrast to a presidential election season that has mostly ignored the issue.
"The climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public's sense of urgency in addressing the crisis," said Mr Gore.
He hopes to amp up urgency with TV ads, such as the one where actor William Macy intones: "We didn't wait for someone else to storm the beaches of Normandy. We didn't wait for someone else to guarantee civil rights."
Big Oil is still welcome at the White House. As George W. Bush's Administration winds down, the President is pushing to build roads in California's national forests to assist oil and natural gas exploration and auction offshore drilling rights in Alaska.
Environmentalists are watching the clock tick down on the Bush Administration, but the big question is what the President's successor, whomever he, or she, might be, will do about climate change.
Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, with senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the two Democrat rivals, all acknowledge that the US has a problem.
"The most exciting thing about this election season," says Tim Greeff, deputy legislative director of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), a non-partisan lobby group, "is that for the first time ever in the US we're going to have two candidates - Senator McCain and his opponent - who believe global warming is happening. And who also believe that human beings are causing it."
This is a big step. Whoever wins the election will have enormous reach on this issue, from appointing international negotiators, judges and top officials, to educating Americans on how climate change is increasingly linked to the economy, national security and energy supplies.
Mr Greeff said: "To have their leader talk about climate change will do a tremendous amount for the awareness of the average American citizen. "It will stress the need to act."
But while Mr McCain, Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama recognise climate change's threat to the US - a seismic break with the Bush era - the devil is in the details.
All three support a cap-and-trade approach (already being adapted by many states and Canadian provinces) to curb greenhouse gas emissions; any carbon tax would be anathema in tax-adverse America.
Mr McCain's cap-and-trade solutions date from a failed 2003 bill - he was a lonely GOP Cassandra on global warming - and fall short of really tackling climate change. He has also missed repeated Senate votes on shifting oil subsidies to renewable energies and supports the nuclear industry.
Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton are greener. Both promise to cut emissions 80 per cent by 2050, promote clean-tech industries - balm to California, where advocates predict solar cells will surpass computer chips as an industry giant - and create five million green-collar jobs, especially in construction and energy efficiency, employment not easily outsourced.
Mr Obama has pledged to consider Mr Gore for a Cabinet post or "higher" on climate change and says he is already in "regular" consultation with the former Vice-President.
All three candidates back California's epic battle to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, which is blocked by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The legal fight, in which California is effectively trying to pass its own global warming law, pits 16 states against the EPA, the Bush Administration and the automobile industry.
A win for California could prime the clean-tech industry, which could help "re-tool" (Mr Obama's words) a US economy close to recession.
"I believe all three candidates understand that what is required [to fight climate change] is a dramatic transformation in our economy," says Nikki Roy, director of congressional affairs for the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change.
"We have to make that happen as quickly as possible. But other than promoting cap-and-trade strategies and green jobs they haven't laid it out specifically.
Still, the world can take heart from America's history. The US was slow getting into World War II but its entry and a rapid shift from a domestic to a wartime economy made all the difference. Could this happen again?
Mr Greeff said: "I think the political history of the US is facing great challenges and overcoming them rapidly. Unfortunately the US has often waited too long to act. But we do have the resources, will, and educational base to create solutions."
The President must tell Americans some hard truths and suggest solutions. Despite growing public alarm climate change remains at the margins of national debate. Major media has ignored it. The LCV's What Are They Waiting For? campaign says that, since January 2007, Americas top five TV reporters have asked the presidential candidates 3201 questions. Just eight mentioned global warming.
Breaking with Bush's stance towards climate change, the candidates refer to a sustainable economy, opening the way for a paradigm shift from fossil fuels. Yet, to date, this remains campaign window dressing. Like other nations that suddenly talk of becoming carbon neutral, it remains unsure if either candidate appreciates quite what a Herculean task retooling America would be.
America's status until recently (when it was overtaken by China) as the world's top CO2 polluter, accounting for 25 per cent of the total, made it a pariah. By reducing US emissions, the White House might persuade China, India and others to follow suit, ending the impasse where developed nations blame the West for climate change. As a diplomatic coup it may resuscitate US prestige.
Unless the US takes the initiative, says Mr Roy, "in 10 years people will look back, aghast, at how we acted like this wasn't a real problem."
Of course, the US remains outside the Kyoto fold. Quite how the 44th President will rejoin the international community on this issue is unsure, as candidates have pointedly ignored how they would tackle climate change on the world stage.
Mr McCain believes America "did the right thing" by shunning the Kyoto Accords. Like Mrs Clinton, he is vague about any international action.
Mr Obama has pledged to create a new forum of the largest greenhouse gas emitters - the G8 nations, plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa - "to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues". He also favours working with the UN to help countries especially vulnerable to climate change.
Mr Roy said: "I think we can feel fairly confident that whoever is president will engage more seriously in trying to negotiate an international agreement or agreements that bind the US to reductions."
"We hope those would be absolute emissions caps."
Maybe. But the US will have to act soon.
As US petrol prices climb inexorably towards the US$4 a gallon mark, energy independence has been a populist mantra throughout the campaign. While candidates have made happy talk about alternative fuels, there is silence about the elephant that sits in the room, Big Oil.
This powerful lobby has done very well under the present administration, so it is hard to imagine they will not try and shape the next.
Given the unholy nexus between America's fossil fuel addiction, national security and climate change, changing this paradigm may be the next president's greatest challenge.
It remains to be seen if there will be blood.
