Effect of Game Theory on Global Climate Change
We’ve been hearing about climate change and the need to take action in the news for decades now, but oddly, every year, our planet’s health seems to be going on a steeper decline. For us to stunt our planet’s increasingly urgent climate change, all nations across the globe need to take action, but it seems that countries are reluctant to do so. We can contribute game theory, in particular the prisoner’s dilemma, to the global climate change.
The prisoner’s dilemma, using the Nash equilibrium, is the situation where there are two prisoners who are investigated separately and forbidden from talking to each other. They each have two options: betray the other prisoner or remain quiet. If they both remain quiet, they are sentenced to only 1 year in prison; if one prisoner betrays the other and one remains quiet, then the betraying prisoner is let off free while the betrayed prisoner serves 10 years; and if both betray each other, then they both serve 5 years. The best solution would be for them to cooperate and remain quiet, but betraying offers the best reward, so they selfishly end up betraying each other.
This can be applied to our planet’s climate change and the lack of action from nations to help. Nations across the globe are always fighting for power, and one thing that defines a powerful nation is a large, strong economy that is usually bolstered by a high industrial output. Unfortunately, the industrial-scale carbon burning that is a result of industrial output is one of the leading causes of global warming and therefore climate change. Using the prisoner’s dilemma analogy, nations are selfish and want to choose what’s best for themselves. They choose to focus on strengthening their economy through industry while tossing the job of fixing the world’s climate to other nations.
The article explains that the effects of climate change from human activity need to be even more intense for nations to start working together to fix our planet. Currently, countries are neglecting the fact that the global climate change will affect all countries on this planet because it not urgent enough for countries to prioritize something global over something domestic. However, once nations feel “drastic environmental deterioration,” they’ll realize that “cooperation becomes the winning strategy.” Ultimately, climate change has to become so urgent and directly affect each individual country enough so that it becomes a domestic issue more important than the fight for power.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-change-prediction-game-theory-tragedy-of-commons
interesting!