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.

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

In the months after George W. Bush's reelection, a lot of liberals and environmentalists were ready to take a hard look at their political agenda, the Democratic Party, and the interest groups they supported.

We know that things like energy independence, getting off oil, getting out of the Middle East, and creating jobs and economic development in the new clean energy industries of the future are much higher priorities for most voters than capping carbon emissions or taxing dirty energy sources. So why not redefine our agenda as the solution to those problems?

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.

The levels of technology investment in the energy sciences pales compared to the kinds of investment we make in the computer and bio-sciences.