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President Obama's attacks on "British Petroleum" and its chief executive, Tony Hayward, are deeply unedifying. Not because of the hypocrisy and misinformation involved, though there is plenty of that: BP has not been called British Petroleum for years and its controversial dividend is denominated in US dollars.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, conjured up images of pound notes flowing into pinstriped pockets in the City when she suggested shareholders had "deeper pockets" than fishermen on the Gulf coast. But recipients of the divi are not all fat cats, and they are certainly not all British. About 40% of BP's dividends are paid to US small investors and pension fund members, including teachers in California and Texas. These are people like Miriam Sullivan, the 74-year-old wife of a retired New Jersey teacher, who told Bloomberg she stands to lose $10,000 a year if the BP dividend is suspended.

US companies have wreaked more than their fair share of environmental havoc and loss of life. There was Exxon Valdez and Piper Alpha. The escalation of the BP row last week overshadowed another story in an Indian courtroom, where seven local employees of the US multinational Union Carbide were convicted of causing death by negligence at its plant in Bhopal in 1984, when a toxic leak killed thousands of people. Union Carbide's American chairman, Warren Anderson, has never been brought to justice and is listed as an "absconder" by the court.

The real problem is not Brit-bashing by US politicians. It is, as US commentator Thomas Friedman has pointed out, that Obama has missed an opportunity to move the discussion on to the underlying issues of climate change and the developed world's addiction to oil.

The horrific effects of this addiction are not confined to the environment. A report published in Sweden last week by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (ECOS) went unremarked in the UK but its allegations are devastating.

ECOS claims its research shows that a consortium of oil companies â€" Lundin of Sweden, Malaysian group Petronas and Austrian concern OMV â€" should be investigated for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan. The oil companies, ECOS says, worked alongside the perpetrators of rape, torture, child abduction and forced displacement, and the consortium's infrastructure enabled the commission of crimes. Lundin, the consortium leader, denies the allegations.

for decades.

BP and its bosses richly deserve to be pilloried over Deepwater but this is far too important to be reduced to a puerile slanging match. When the US president speaks to David Cameron this week and meets the BP chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, there needs to be a constructive dialogue. There is still time to grasp this opportunity for real change.

To sustain our oil addiction, companies are pushing the boundaries into controversial areas such as tar sands, into conflict zones, and into joint ventures with oligarchs. We have entered the era of Extreme Oil. Deepwater does not tell us much about the sins of British oil companies versus American ones. It tells us a great deal about the huge costs, human, financial and environmental, of being hooked on oil. The US is the world's biggest consumer. Reducing that consumption and moving towards a more sustainable economy would have enormous benefits: it would cut emissions of greenhouse gases, leave the US less vulnerable to oil price spikes and lessen the need to deal with oil-rich countries that may compromise foreign policy.

Obama could have used his political capital to initiate a serious discussion on how to end our dangerous dependency. How saddening that, so far, he has chosen not to.

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