After a brief couple of years in the late '70s, public funding for clean energy technologies dried up and has been on the decline ever since.

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?

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

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

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

Environmentalism has become a special interest, incapable of addressing large, complex, and global problems such as 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.