Time to Focus on Innovation Targets, Not Emissions Targets, to Fight Climate Change

The recently failed climate talks in Lima, Peru illustrate that new leadership is needed if we hope to address climate change. We should not try to coax countries into agreeing to emissions targets, but to commit to targets on clean energy innovation. In other words, nations should set goals to invest a certain amount of money in research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) to make clean energy so cheap that all businesses and consumers will voluntarily replace fossil fuels with clean energy because it makes economic sense to do so.