Think Win-Win To Beat Climate Change

On climate change, zero-sum thinking doesn't work; There are win-win solutions to this problem.

Joseph Robertson, 2 April 2018 (UK Guardian)

Democracy is not a zero-sum game. Behaving as if it is degrades democratic process and our personal political sovereignty…[In a zero-sum game, whatever] one gains, another must lose…[But the] beating heart of a free society is the guarantee of personal political sovereignty…Political sovereignty is informational sovereignty…Distortion of our informational environment has slowed humanity’s overall effort to eliminate corruption and transcend harmful practices, like those that destabilize Earth’s climate…[H]uman intelligence, creative collaboration, and adherence to basic principles of fairness, make more good possible…Success requires dealing ably with complexity…Zero-sum thinking strips intelligence from our politics. Generative thinking recognizes that complex constructive interactions make us smarter, more capable, freer, and more secure…If we are informationally sovereign, we can scale up smart decision-making to correct hidden market failures and expand routine access to increased value for everyone…

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To distort and disrupt climate and energy decision-making, carbon polluters spent hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades. Their aim was to degrade the sovereignty of voters, consumers, rivals in the innovation space, the free press, and even nation states…[That] undermined the competitiveness of polluting industries, making outdated methods appear longer lived than they stand a real chance of being, even as they build up unprecedented, nonlinear carbon liability. Market forces will eventually stop rewarding ever more costly carbon-intensive practices that put irreplaceable natural life-supports at risk…There is no reason for such risky business models, or corrupt institutions, to continue to undermine humanity’s ability to solve big problems…” click here for more

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