Transcript Benefits of cooperation vis-à-vis mitigating climate

Benefits of Cooperation vis-à-vis
Mitigating Climate Change
Global Video-Conference on Copenhagen Treaty
Common Future
27–28 November 2009
Martin Sewell
University of Cambridge
[email protected]
The Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR)
Tragedy of the commons
• Human-induced climate change is a classic case of Garrett Hardin’s
tragedy of the commons—the benefits of burning fossil fuels accrue to
individuals, companies and nations, whilst the costs accrue to the planet
as a whole.
Prisoner’s dilemma
• The tragedy of the commons is
essentially a multi-player
generalization of the prisoner’s
dilemma.
• Cooperation involves limiting
greenhouse gases, whilst defection
involves emitting greenhouse
gases.
• If the game is played a fixed
number of times, it is optimal to
defect.
• If the game is played an indefinite
number of times, the incentive to
defect can be overcome by the
threat of punishment.
Cooperate
Cooperate
Defect
win
win much
win
lose much
lose much
Defect
win much
lose
lose
Advantages of cooperation vis-à-vis climate change mitigation
• The law of comparative advantage would work against mitigation with a
unilateral agreement (due to carbon leakage), but for mitigation with a
multilateral agreement (e.g. trading solar power for wind power).
• Less fossil fuels burned by ‘clean’ countries means more fossil fuels left
to be burned inefficiently by other countries.
• Individual countries may wish to be seen to go green, but are afraid of
going it alone as they may lose out to the competition. In this sense,
they want to be forced to go green, along with everyone else.
• Unilateral action would be ineffective anyway, it wouldn’t prevent climate
change.
COP15
• United Nations Climate Change Conference
• Copenhagen
• 7–18 December 2009
• Delegations from 192 countries
• More than 15,000 environment ministers, officials, diplomats,
campaigners, journalists and even heads of state
• Aim: establish a new global treaty for climate change mitigation beyond
2012
• The key date for these commitments is 2020, although some countries
are looking beyond that, to 2050.
Trust
• The prisoner’s dilemma ceases to be a dilemma if both players trust
each other—mutual trust leads to the win-win situation.
• Ultimately, the solution to the tragedy of the global commons relies on
trust.
• An international treaty relies on trust, but sets countries up so that they
can cooperate by honouring the treaty, or defect by failing to honour the
treaty. The latter would be considered a form of cheating.
• Although we are bad at looking for altruism, we are good at detecting
cheating.
Martin Sewell
[email protected]