Skepticism about the potential to achieve the kinds of breakthroughs we need has been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All of the barriers to innovation in the energy sector are arguments for a big commitment to public investment. Only the public sector can make the kind of long-term, common investments that we need to overcome those barriers to innovation.

As social values shifted through the '80s and '90s, as modern conservatism rose to power, and as the electorate became a good deal more skeptical of both government and environmentalists, these strategies, and the institutions that were created to prosecute them, foundered.

Making big investments to get off oil, making clean energy alternatives widely available and cheap, and creating millions of new jobs in clean energy industries is a winner with American voters and can carry the whole suite of policies that we need to address global warming.

We don't make the investments we need to make, the sector fails to innovate, and then we conclude that it can't innovate.

We can still cap carbon, but that needn't be at the top of the agenda that we communicate to voters.

Skepticism about the potential to achieve the kinds of breakthroughs we need has been a self-fulfilling prophecy.