This week nations are meeting in Lima, Peru to try to hammer out an international plan on climate change action.

So far these meetings have come up short on measures scientists say are needed to avert the most serious effects of climate change.

"This is not going to be easy," said US Special Envoy on climate Todd Stern in Lima on Monday. "It's never easy."

Stern said that while he felt delegates were working well together, there remained "significant divisions."

But amid these divisions on how to move forward, some are pointing to a different strategy: rather than push for an elusive international treaty, appeal instead to national self-interest. Supporters are calling it Plan B.

"The idea of Plan B is to get away from the idea that meeting targets to cut our emissions of the warming gasses is a real problem for national economies, because the emerging truth is that it's not, it's quite cheap," said Fred Pearce, journalist for Yale Environment 360, a publication from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

"Many countries, including the US, are stabilized or reducing emissions just as a natural way of progressing, in moving towards cleaner technologies, [such as] solar power and wind power," said Pearce.