Climate Change and Game Theory
When Trump decided to pull the US out the Paris Climate Agreement, it seemed this would be part of a larger trend of developed countries balking at the responsibility of keeping carbon emissions low and reducing certain industrial activities. The President shared the concern of US sovereignty being hampered and not having the ability to shape the country’s environmental laws, ones that favor economic growth and US priorities. The researchers from the article published in Nature magazine considered the incentives for overusing resources and polluting the environment, which tend to be public goods, and the phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons (when self-serving individuals contribute to the depletion or destruction of shared resources without consideration of common good) through the lens of game theory. Specifically, their models take into account how payoffs change after multiple games due to defection, depletion of resources used, and long-term considerations.
In this circumstance, the US not cooperating with the other nations on tackling climate change might cause other nations to defect (which hasn’t really happened). Eventually, however, as the climate change crisis deepens, with more frequent forest fires, droughts, and other major consequences, the game being played changes, compelling countries to change course and reaffirm their commitment. Unfortunately, the model predicts that such decisions to cooperate and radical actions to tackle climate change won’t happen until the environment is further deteriorated. In the end, the suggestion made by one of the researchers is to offer short-term incentives to compel cooperation and lessen the chance of defection. However, the current problem is that a large country with the ability to offer such financial incentives has pulled out of the game. In the end, there are multiple games being played within the US, with policymakers, citizens, and corporations as the players, and until something gets most of these players to cooperate, the US may remain out of the larger game.
Links:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-change-prediction-game-theory-tragedy-of-commons
Link to the original Nature magazine research article present within the first Wired article.