"It means Canada has been given a very long breathing space," Michal Moore, a professor of energy economics at the University of Calgary, said Thursday.

"Until we get to the point that we are willing to say that carbon is an issue that we have to solve, not that we ought to solve, Canada is just going to tread water again and wait to see how the U.S. tackles the problem," Moore said.

"What the prime minister and (Environment Minister) Jim Prentice basically got was a hall pass. They can now say we don't have to work on this right now."

Cap-and-trade aims to regulate and ultimately reduce carbon emissions by creating a commodity out of the right to emit carbon, and allowing that commodity to be traded on the free market. Cap-and-trade legislation was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last June, but it's been stalled in the Senate ever since as the health-care reform debate took centre stage in Congress.

Obama's proposal earlier this week to open up waters along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling suggests the administration is moving in a different direction on climate change and energy supply.

The offshore drilling announcement also bodes well for Canadian energy producers, another Alberta environmental expert says.

"In terms of offshore drilling, the main driver here is energy security - Obama's very much about drilling to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil," said Andrew Leach, an assistant professor of environmental economics at the University of Alberta's school of business in Edmonton.

"Canada is not a big threat to U.S. energy security; in fact, we're a complement to it, and this could mean the administration is moving in a direction that could benefit our energy producers."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar suggested earlier this week that cap-and-trade, a year ago the darling of Democratic efforts to combat climate change, appears to have fallen out of favour.

"I think the term 'cap-and-trade' is not in the lexicon anymore," Salazar said in an interview on CNBC.

One of the architects of the Senate climate bill, Democrat John Kerry, said late last year that he didn't know what cap-and-trade meant. His co-sponsor on the bill, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, has since declared widespread cap-and-trade dead. Instead, their bill will reportedly address energy independence, job creation and pollution.

There are undoubtedly politics at play.

Republicans are largely in favour of ending the ban on new offshore drilling - the phrase "drill, baby, drill" became a Sarah Palin catchphrase during the 2008 presidential election campaign - while Democrats are almost uniformly opposed.

Obama needs Republican support to get the Senate bill passed, and his announcement on offshore drilling was most certainly a calculated attempt to woo Republicans into backing the Senate legislation, Moore says.

But will it work? Moore says not likely, because for every Republican Obama might bring onside, he'll lose liberal Democrats, particularly those from oceanside states who are vehemently opposed to offshore drilling.

"He's trying to buy some support from Republicans that will put the climate bill back on the table," Moore said.

"How do you get them back to the table? You start talking about offshore drilling. But he's playing a card that I think is an absolutely a squandered card, and they've probably lost ground with it."

Leach isn't convinced cap-and-trade is dead.

"I believe they're backing away from the word rather than the policy," he said.

"I don't think there's a huge policy shift coming, but the announcement on offshore drilling was really about looking to shore up a few Republican votes for Kerry's Senate bill. They'll have to give up some Democrat votes, though, to get them."