Green is not just about renewable energy. It's also about creating a new direction for the whole economy. This requires government to step up, not step back, creating the kinds of mission-oriented public organizations that will enable us to tackle climate change - as ambitious as those that got us to the moon. It also requires the financial sector to be less short-term since we know that short-term finance has distorted incentives and directions in areas like biotechnology.

If we look at Germany's infrastructure policy, it has been driven by its mission-oriented focus on green infrastructure. This affects both innovation and infrastructure, old industries and new. The German steel industry, for example, has adapted to the policy by lowering its material content through a 'repurpose, reuse and recycle' strategy.

Unfortunately, simplistic framing of problems leads to simplistic answers.

Real median household incomes in the U.S. were basically the same in 1989 as in 2014. But we are also seeing similar challenges in the U.K. in the stagnation of real wages.

It would be a mistake to overstate the similarities between the Brexit vote and Trump's win - but there are common themes, not least in the rallying cries that the winning campaigns used. They focused on a supposed economic threat posed by outsiders, as immigrants or as trade partners. This fuelling of anxieties underpinned a narrative centered on the need to "regain control," whether of borders or of economic forces.

Germany is using its Energiewende policy as a way of envisioning a green transformation and innovation across many sectors.

With a Trump administration we don't know enough yet to make predictions, but if past behavior is any indication, I am not encouraged.