Game Theory and the Self-Fulfilling Climate Tragedy

Abstract

Abstract:Game theorists tend to model climate negotiations as a so-called 'tragedy of the commons'. This is rather worrisome, since the conditions under which such commons problems have historically been solved are almost entirely absent in the case of international greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, I will argue that the predictive accuracy of the tragedy model might not stem from the model's inherent match with reality but rather from the model's ability to make self-fulfilling predictions. I then sketch some possible ways to dispel the tragedy, including (1) recognising some ways the assumptions of the model fail, (2) taking seriously recent work suggesting that increasing greenhouse gas emissions is not in most nations' own self-interest, and (3) preferring alternative models like collective risk dilemmas, bargaining games, or cooperative models.

Some Fears of the Anthropocene

“…Jakob Ortmann and Walter Veit's concern in 'Theory Roulette: Choosing that Climate Change is not a Tragedy of the Commons' is less about the Anthropocene per se than how we deal with it. They take up the theme addressed by Kopec (2017) that widespread economic reasoning about the climate crisis, which views it as the archetypal 'Tragedy of the Commons' (TOC), is performative. In the 'tragedy' analysis, free-riding is represented as rationally required, despite the fact that it leads collectively to results that nobody wants, here a lack of mitigation action.…”

Negotiating climate change: A frame analysis of COP21 in British, American, and Chinese news media

“…The former presumes that negotiation happens among rational actors pursuing personal preferences or interests. As such, the negotiations are perceived as a competitive interaction between nation-actors (Kopec, 2017). By contrast, the normative approach concerns equality and justice in the distribution of responsibilities.…”

“…The history of international climate change negotiations is rife with tensions. Literature devoted to the interpretation of political controversies revealed many factors leading countries to choose “irreconcilable negotiation positions” (Bailer et al, 2015), for example, asymmetrical world power relations (Singh, 2015), egocentrism (Kopec, 2017), and democratic status (Bailer et al, 2015). The key problem lies in the burden-sharing feature of negotiations, asking countries to take on potentially costly actions to resolve the global problem (Hochstetler and Milkoreit, 2015).…”

Grounding Words and Flights of Imagination

“…The moral calculus may tell us about the demandingness of our duties, but it does not seem to capture the moral tragedy of a situation in which fulfilling our duty still leaves us morally distraught. Tragedy of the commons models of climate change may be a self-fulfilling prophecy that we should try to avoid (Kopec, 2017), but the felt moral tragedy of our predicament is less likely to be circumventable. Another question-worthy assumption is that we can make sense of the idea of individual duties in a globalised world.…”