On climate change, zero-sum thinking doesn't work | Joseph Robertson

There are win-win solutions to this problem.

Democracy is not a zero-sum game. Behaving as if it is degrades democratic process and our personal political sovereignty.

A zero-sum game is a contest for control of finite resources. Whatever one gains, another must lose. When two or more candidates compete for a single public office, only one can win, so many people view politics as bloodsport, applying “winner takes all” thinking to everything political. But elected officials are not conquerors; they are sworn servants to all their constituents.

• In 2017, the United States spent as much in disaster relief — for floods, wildfires, drought, and storms — as the total comparable spending from 1980 to 2010.

• We now have scalable clean power-generating technologies, cost-effective industrial-scale and in-home battery storage, and rapidly expanding clean finance.

• We are now witnessing the rise of high-efficiency climate-smart finance to drive new investment and innovation in many sectors.

• The mainstreaming of green bonds and application of smart carbon pricing policies will make the whole economy more efficient at building value for people, institutions, and enterprise.