Introduction

• Author: Sarah Krakoff/Melissa Powers/Jonathan Rosenbloom
• Pages: 13-17

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Introduction

Sarah Krakoff, Melissa Powers,

and Jonathan Rosenbloom

“Protecting the environment can only occur at the expense of: jobs, economic

growth, population increase, anti-poverty measures, food production, etc.” is

type of expression has been around as long as there have been eorts to reign

in pollution and ensure the vitality of natur al systems. Behind it are a variety

of concerns, including resistance to government regulation, skepticism about

the importance or extent of environmental harms, and sometimes even pro-

environmental views about the limits of Earth’s carrying capacity.

When the Environmental Law Collaborative (ELC) met for its third

biennial meeting (ELC3) in the summer of 2016, President Donald Trump

had secured the Republican Party’s nomination but had not yet won the

presidential election. We could not foresee the extent to which acrimonious

and divisive language would be used to further the Trump Administration’s

policy goals. We did not know, in other words, that zero-sum rhetoric and a

winners-ver sus-losers vie w of the world would domin ate discourse about pub-

lic policy and governance. It was therefore coincidental that we had already

set out to tackle the origins and mea nings of zero-sum frameworks and asses s

their implications for natural resource and environmental protection. Since

the election, the Trump Administration’s rationales for a host of environ-

mental and natural resources policies have embraced a zero-sum approach,

seemingly preferring a world divided into winners and losers. Accordingly,

many of our writings, which mostly occurred after the election, interrogate

and analyze the Trump Administration’s actions. Other chapters address

how zero-sum rhetoric gained ascendance in t he rst place, and why it often

obscures the values underlying conicts about environmental protection.

As several authors explain, one problem is that many zero-sum charac-

terizations have very little to do with the original meaning of a “zero-sum”

game. In game theory, zero-sum means that a person may gain only at the

expense of another person losing. Two-person games, such as chess and

checkers, exemplify this win/loss dichotomy. Transported to economics, the

idea of zero-sum similarly mean s that one party must lose for another to win.

But, contrary to the common way the term is used, zero-sum outcomes are