As I write this piece, the talks in Cancun are about where we expected. The 10 days made little progress at the staff level – so Ministers have arrived to take the reins and find a compromise. I expect they will produce an agreement by the end of the week, but it will take some late nights of hard bargaining. The outcome will be modest, setting up a process to resolve remaining issues at next year’s negotiations in South Africa.

I think all of us who come here as observers are struggling with how big the Conferences have gotten – and how difficult it is to make meaningful contributions to the debate, given the modern security needs and crowd control. On the “ground level” here, observers must shuttle around multiple venues on buses, and gridlock is common. I mention this because it is almost symbolic of what is going on in the negotiations themselves – the topics are big and complex and the process doesn’t work very well.

So what is needed to change it? I actually think it’s pretty simple. It’s not really about process. The problem is simply that the U.S. has not reached consensus at home on a climate policy. Once we do, the international process will start to move forward again. China needs to do the same thing on its domestic climate policy – but my sense is that China will only do it if they can understand how their commitments measure up against the United States’ commitment, and vice versa. Even if the negotiations were moved to a different for a – say the G20 or the Major Economies Forum – this same fundamental problem would exist. The US and China would need to adopt real, effective policies and have respect for each other’s approach.

While this is a simple fundamental, it is not going to be easy to accomplish. In the business conversations on the sides of Cancun, you can feel a lot of optimism about the potential for China to adopt a market-based carbon policy, possibly faster than the U.S. Meanwhile, we in the U.S. appear to be moving forward with a command-and-control policy under the existing Clean Air Act that will cost more and accomplish less.

Maybe China’s leadership toward market based instruments will wake us up. Maybe China can spur a green technology revolution across Asia that gets our attention. Maybe U.S. leaders will realize that the environmental risks of inaction are huge – and that a market-based carbon policy can prompt that surge in economic growth we all want to see from exciting new export markets. Or maybe the U.S. will get left behind in our own gridlock.

For those of us active in the national policy debate, these are the stakes of the coming Congress – and its also the key to a more effective international process.

The ancient Greeks reportedly once used solar energy to repel a Roman fleet by using mirrors to concentrate the energy of the sun and set fire to the fleet's sails. Looking at the low expectations for a climate deal in Cancun, reinforced by the shocking announcement that the tax extenders for solar and wind energy have been left out of the tax deal on Capitol Hill, one could forgive our latter-day solar entrepreneurs if they turned their hot mirrors on a few policymakers for leaving renewable energy out in the cold.

Reducing carbon emission and continuing the growth of the renewable energy industry and opportunities for American leadership in the global clean energy field depend on incentives for responsible clean energy development.

The Obama administration has made significant strides in deploying renewable energy projects - due in no small part to the availability of federal tax incentives that must be reauthorized. More than 3,000 megawatts of utility-scale solar projects on public lands have been authorized under Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and we have supported many of them.

The Wilderness Society supports both tax incentives for clean energy and a Renewable Energy Standard, as well as staunchly defending the Clean Air Act, and the ability for the Environmental Protection Agency to protect us from carbon pollution. Doing so will discourage the carbon-heavy polluting energy sources of yesteryear, and promote new, cleaner energy.

However, we seem to be entering the era of “energy chunks” with misplaced priorities by leaving out those that offer the most hope of a sustainable future for the generations to come.

Cancun may yet reach agreement on reducing environmental deforestation and degradation, which will help control carbon pollution. If we can halt the destruction of forests around the world – including here at home – it will signal new and welcome attention to the problem of climate change. But carbon sinks alone cannot save us if carbon emissions continue to climb. Let’s hope that by Christmas the Congress finds the energy to help control carbon pollution and guarantee renewable energy.

Cancun is a rather nice place to take a vacation, much like reality is taking a vacation as millions are spent in ineffective talk amongst the international bureaucrats and professional environmentalists, many of whom left their ideals way behind as they became "sophisticated" lobbyists, even though they may not even realize it.

In the main: the diplomats are there to represent their talking points; the businesses and lobbyists are there to represent the bottom line; and the academics are there to write the next required reading for their classes. The politicians are there to convince their publics that they "really care about the planet" as they do focus group meetings to see what their political consultants decide what issues they should take on next, and what words they should use. Many of the NGOs are there to say they were there to their funders. Their well-meaning staffs and interns will likely end up by the pool lamenting the failures once again.

Oh, yes, there are some good, decent and well meaning people there, but they will be overshadowed by the environmentalist industry that has watered down real thinking and debates high-school level talking points. Some of these very good people will be the most frustrated at these meetings. They know the importance of the issues, but also understand that selfishness, myopia and zero-sum games will control the proceedings.

As all of this goes on the real problems are not solved. But given the habits and inertia of five star international gatherings these problems seems rather beside the point.

There will be lots of emotional, intense, and fervent discussions amongst well-spoken and well-dressed people as the poor of the world are facing down drought, sea level rises, and changing cropping patterns that they may or may not be able to adapt to and more. Starvation and thirst are everyday things for the poor. But who is asking the poor? Are any of them going to be in the Hilton waxing sophisticatedly about bits, bites, croutons and global warming over a nicely shaken margaratia: organic, of course.

Such international gatherings have proven long ago that the system they are based upon is in need of great repair, but the leadership continues to see the problem as "why don't we just all get along". The real hard work to build to such meetings has to be done first. Trust needs to be built across countries and peoples in this most untrusting time. The tough issues need to be ironed out by the experts over long time periods. The poor and those who live off the land and the water for their survival need to be part of this. Leaders need to get real and look very clearly down the barrel of the environmental gun we all face, rather than strategizing their next career moves.

It will all prove to be yet another expensive, inelegant failure. We all know why it will be expensive. Where does the inelegant come from? Without a real solution all climate meetings are inelegant by definition. Also, this sort of inelegance would fit the following dictionary definition: "unappealing through being unnecessarily complicated".

Where are the great leaders who will make the needed changes happen in reasonable ways where we can all win?

Copenhagen and now Cancun are gridlocked by the lack of confidence and trust between nations. When diplomacy founders over distrust, and the issue is war or peace, diplomats know what to do -- take easy steps to build confidence.

We ought to do the same for the climate. And the easy steps don't have to be meaningless or small ones. Elsewhere in this string Bill O'Keefe argues that we don't have the technology we need to save the climate. We don't have all of it, that's true. But we aren't using what we have.

Google has framed its goal as R<C, the need for renewable electricity to be cheaper than carbon based coal. It's an urgent task. But for 1.5 billion people in the world, it's a problem already solved. R<C for anyone who is currently not on the grid -- so the 1.5 billion poorest people in the world are already paying more for carbon based fuels -- diesel or kerosene -- than they would have to pay for solar electricity, wind or biomass. They are paying a lot more. The poor pay 20% of the world's lighting bill, but receive in exchange only .1% of the light. The poor pay 10,000 times the average for lumen of light. Solar is a bargain for them.

Why aren't the poor racing to buy solar power since it's so much cheaper? For the same reason that farmers in the US didn't have electricity -- they didn't have access to affordable, cheap loans to pay the upfront costs. Kerosene comes in a bottle, and can be bought a week at a time. Solar comes in an expensive panel which will provice ten years worth of electricity -- but the poor can't get affordable loans to get off kerosene and onto the sun.

The upfront cost of setting up credit for these loans would, globally, be less than $10 billion -- a pittance compared to the cost of coal fired power plants being financed by the World Bank in places like South Africa and India. These coal plants won't get electricity to the poor, because they don't solve the problem that the poor are not on the grid. If we really want a low price solution, we need to pick the right technology AND the right customers -- and at Cancun the world could agree, as part of a broader package on finance, to create the seed capital needed to light the world.

Even without an international climate change treaty, states, regional entities and U.S. consumers are likely to maintain their interest in reducing their carbon footprints. U.S. businesses are also likely to remain interested in positioning themselves to comply with environmental regulations, reducing energy and manufacturing costs, and reducing their exposure to volatility in petroleum feedstock prices – all of which can reduce carbon emissions.

A 2009 report from WWF shows that industry and consumers can save up to 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year by transforming the manufacturing of everyday consumer goods and substituting renewable materials for petroleum. That report notes that industrial biotechnology is the key to making environmentally friendly fabrics, fragrances, food products and advanced biofuels.

A number of these everyday products have been on display in Cancun at COP 16. For instance, food-service ware, coffee cups, cold cups, straws, and take-out food containers used at the event were made from renewable plastics. Renewable biobased plastics, which have been proven over their lifecycle to reduce carbon emissions compared to petroleum plastics, can be used in hundreds of common consumer products.

Consumers and businesses can drive public policy by demanding lower-carbon products, manufacturing processes and raw material supplies. U.S. regulators can help consumers and businesses identify low-carbon alternatives by coordinating agreed upon standards for measuring energy use and direct emissions in life cycle of products and processes, and by labeling or facilitating the identification of environmentally friendly products. As Ben Franklin once said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” When it comes to biobased products and manufacturing processes we can have both pollution prevention and cost reduction.

While attaining an international agreement on climate action appears challenging, wind energy provides the U.S. with a win-win opportunity: a way to reduce carbon emissions while at the same time revitalizing rural communities across the heartland and building a new manufacturing industry that can provide thousands of jobs.

This opportunity is exemplified by the grand opening this past week of a new wind turbine nacelle factory in Hutchinson, Kansas, by Siemens Energy. In the words of Kansas U.S. Senator and Governor-Elect Sam Brownback, "The grand opening of the Siemens wind nacelle manufacturing plant is great news for the Hutchinson community and the state of Kansas. The expansion of renewable energy infrastructure is critical as America looks for ways to decrease its dependence on foreign, non-renewable energy resources."

The new 300,000-square-foot facility is located in the heartland of the U.S. with highway and rail access to ship completed nacelles to wind farms in the U.S. and throughout the Americas, and it employs 130 people, a number that is expected to triple when the factory is fully operational.

How can we seize the opportunity the Hutchinson factory represents and create more wind energy manufacturing facilities across the U.S.? The key is stable, consistent federal policies to provide the certainty that businesses and investors need.

In the short term, the wind energy industry needs an extension of its tax incentive. And to provide the foundation for sustained industry growth in the years ahead, it needs the consistent policy (at no cost to the Treasury) that only a Renewable Electricity Standard will provide.

When I was in Kyoto in 1997, I was roundly criticized for telling the press that the Protocol was fatally flawed and would never work. Time has validated that observation. The problem with the Kyoto Protocol, and variations of it, is that it run counters to political, economic, energy, and technology realities. In the end, realities do matter.

The goal of stabilizing and then possibly reducing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases can only be achieved by a suite of energy technologies that do not now exist and will take decades to develop. As one group of scientists concluded almost a decade ago, developing those will be the technology challenge of the century.

Organizations like the Energy Information Administration and International Energy Agency have concluded that 80% of our energy needs and those of the world will be met by fossil energy at least until 2030 even with advances in technology and energy efficiency gains. That means that emissions will continue to rise as the world’s population grows because of the economic growth to support a growing population and rising standards of living.

About 1.6 billion people in the world today do not have access to commercial energy. They live in levels of poverty that would make the worst off of American society seem well to do. They have high disease and infant mortality rates. As their economies develop and they seek higher standards of living, which we should help them achieve, their emissions will grow. The only unsettled question is the rate of emission growth. Helping them move up the energy technology scale will result in emissions growing more slowly.

In the developed world, absolute reductions in emissions are not realistic because they would require suppressing fossil energy use which would mean sacrificing economic growth. The past two years have seen US emissions decline but it took a serious recession to make that happen. It should be clear by now, if there was any doubt, that citizens want a growing economy; not a shrinking one.

If the US and the rest of the developed world are realistic, they will abandon illusions of taking emissions to some past level like 15% below 2005 and focus on slowing emission growth, accelerating the deployment here and elsewhere of our best technologies, and commit to a long term R&D program to develop new low and no carbon energy systems. Such a program should be designed so that the appropriate roles of public and private efforts and partnerships are clearly understood and pursued. The government should focus on basic research and initiatives to meet its own needs as DARPA does for DOD and stop trying to pick winners.

The US is wasting billions of dollars on subsidies to achieve an industrial and technology policy to achieve political and ideological objectives. History shows that won’t work but will result in the misallocation of resources and tremendous waste. Instead of subsidies for electric vehicles and so called “renewable” energy, subsidies should be ended and replaced with a carefully designed carbon tax. That would provide the signal for investors and industry to search for lower carbon alternatives help not hinder economic growth. In addition, the revenue raised by a carbon tax should be offset by a reduction in the payroll tax, giving workers more take home pay and employers an incentive to hire.

Addressing greenhouse emission levels should be seen as the equivalent of a marathon; not a sprint. Our economy has been on a path of reducing carbon intensity--the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of GDP--and there are common sense, economically defensible actions that can be taken to move us along that path faster. Impediments to the turn over of old coal fired utilities should be removed because replacements will either be cleaner coal units, natural gas, or nuclear.

Nuclear energy has a great deal of potential but its cost is still prohibitive. Actions which lower its cost are essential if it is to make a larger contribution to meeting our electrical power needs. Loan guarantees and other subsidies are the wrong way to go as are renewable portfolio standards.

Our proven reserves of natural gas provide an abundant, lower carbon source of energy that should be used for power generation and perhaps centrally fueled commercial transportation. Proven reserves of natural gas are sufficient to meet our needs for the remainder of this century, at least. Government actions that distort the transportation market in the name of climate change--electric vehicles and unreasonably high CAFE standards waste resources because they attempt to force technology and force consumer choice. Known technologies have the potential of significantly improving the performance of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Those improvements will reduce emissions and the amount of gasoline consumed.

Finally, the entire UN COP process should be junked; it can’t be fixied. It has failed and in the process increased tension between the developed and developing world. The Asian-Pacific Partnership and Major Economies Initiative showed a great deal of potential and are worth pursuing and expanding.

As all of these initiatives are pursued, they should be modified to reflect new knowledge about the climate system and human influence on it. It is not a given that a climate apocalypse is in the offing. The science really is not settled.