In the words of James Carville, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The issues that mobilize people the most are those that affect their daily lives. Our message needs to be that the clean energy revolution will increase the quality of life for everyone – from the American coal miner to the Burmese farmer, from inner city kids in Bronx to retirees in Florida.

Even once we have people mobilized to change their way of life, a related question we need to ask is this: How do we transfer the momentum of increasingly green individual decision-making (conservation, hybrids, etc.) into demands for the substantial government investment in clean energy, green jobs and efficiency we need to make this transition fast enough?

I’d like to offer two answers: 1) focus on energy, not climate change; and 2) focus on investment, not carbon pricing. In my view, it’s time to make the transition from youth “climate” movement to youth energy movement. Climate change is only one component of a much larger energy challenge, which includes rapidly escalating energy prices and a lack of energy access for billions worldwide. Energy is the nexus issue — not climate.

Part of the challenge for getting “real action from the non-committed” is how you define “real” and “bold” action. If it means establishing a stringent cap and trade system to set an extremely high price on carbon, we’ll never get enough policymakers committed. But if real and bold action means investments to make clean energy cheap and create new industries and new jobs — funded by a modest carbon price — then we’ll be much better positioned to rally our policymakers.

So what should we be doing? For starters, we should be challenging the Democrats to raise their level of commitment to clean energy investment. Obama has committed to $150 billion. That number should be at least $500 billion. I’d venture to say that if there’s a number more important than any other on the planet, that’s it.