Here's a surprise. The countries with the best stories to tell at the forthcoming U.N. Copenhagen conference on climate change will probably be the ones that have not signed up to carbon-reducing targets at all, or have only signed up very recently. It could be China, the United States, India and Japan that are making far the best progress in genuinely cutting carbon emissions and adopting greener life and work styles.

This is because many of the policymakers and lofty statespersons who attend events like Copenhagen have lost touch with the real springs of human progress. They have forgotten that ambitious promises by politicians convince ever fewer in a skeptical world and that the real drivers are changes in actual behavior at every level, from the home to the factory to the office and in every aspect of daily life.

These changes come about because people and businesses have actual incentives to make them and see positive, immediate and profitable advantage in pursuing them.

In the world of targets and promises it is different. The political leaders and their advisers who make them, especially about distant dates like 2050, or even 2020, a decade from now, will mostly be long gone by the time their targets come up and are seen to have been missed.

The idea that passing laws to make them compulsory, for years ahead, is doubly absurd. Yet this is what Britain has done and other governments are being urged to do. By contrast, individual householders, companies and organizations calculate the immediate advantages in going green, in developing new green products and in pushing ahead at the cutting edge of technology, driven by hard incentives, with perhaps a touch of idealism.

The situation in Japan is especially ironic, since this is a nation in which people are already working at every level to save energy, increase efficiency and cut carbon intensity. The drivers for this behavior change are visible, immediate and already in place. The Japanese performance is world class and widely acknowledged as such, because it starts at the grass roots.

Yet along comes a declaration from Japan's new government that there must be a target — a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Target-obsessed campaigners and politicians have criticized this target. They want to announce even bigger ones. It makes them feel really good.

Yet the Japanese figure will not make the lightest difference to an already creditable performance in curbing the energy required for every unit of production and curbing the carbon- intensity of all energy used. It already makes economic sense to behave this way, as well as sense in terms of Japan's energy security. If anything, targets will confuse the issue. They are simply not needed.

Another good example of this delusion and confusion comes from Lord Browne, the former head of BP. This industrial leader rightly warns against the sheer unreality of announcing carbon targets 40 years ahead. But he nevertheless insists that we need all sorts of medium-term targets, national targets and industry-wide targets for poorer countries.

There is a serious misreading of human psychology here. It seems that when fashion-conscious politicians and commentators address green and climate issues, their feet leave the ground of reality. Their only wish becomes the desire to satisfy the clamor for carbon targets.

Latest surveys in the United Kingdom confirm that less than half the population are impressed by appeals and targets coming from their leaders to change their lifestyles and save the planet. On the other hand there is almost universal support for any products and methods that will cut energy and fuel bills. Shrewd manufacturers will recognize this and see where the market lies. They do not need implausible long-term targets to make them do what is obviously in their own interest anyway.

The issue boils down to one of technology versus "targetry." The central policy aim must be to ensure that around family breakfast tables, in boardrooms, in well-run office blocks and in enlightened science laboratories and centers, the best and wisest minds are incentivized to turn to innovative ways of cutting energy intensity and carbon intensity.

In other words the advantages of using less electricity and other fuels, and drawing power from greener energy sources, need to be clear and obvious to all. That applies as much to the poorest countries as to the richest.

Consumers and enterprises are already acting this way in many countries not because remote national or international targets have been announced, but because it pays people to act and because a cleaner green world is what people now want along with fresh water supplies, safer surroundings and a more harmonious and secure existence.

Declarations may flow from Copenhagen, along with dramatic negotiations, hard bargaining and triumphant announcements of global deals and promises. Green crusaders will demand ever bigger figures.

But it is at the grass roots, and at much humbler levels, where the real changes in behavior will decide whether a lower carbon, greener world can be achieved. The enterprises that seize and exploit these opportunities, and the governments that calmly create the right framework of encouragement for them to do so, will show us which nations in the 21st century are going to prosper and make the best contribution to humankind.

Those targets can be packed away or framed and hung on office walls. The real action is going to be elsewhere.

David Howell is a former British Cabinet minister and former chairman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He is now a member of the House of Lords.