Five Ways The Government Can Create Sustainable Innovation

The government doesn’t have the best track record when investing directly in sustainable companies, but there is a lot it can do to create an environment conducive to real innovation. This is how it should do it in Obama’s second term. Obama’s second term is the chance to turn lemons into lemonade. America has a lot of experience with that: Like rebuilding the U.S. infrastructure after WWII; or using the space race in the 1960s to drive innovation (we even had the side benefit of Tang). The big challenges now are mobility (transportation), energy (electricity), and water. That means they are also the big wealth opportunities. Why? At the core of each is insatiable consumer demand. We need look no further than Hurricane Sandy to see our dependence upon transportation fuel, electricity, and drinking water. While we have just experienced two years of gridlock in Wash...