Game Theory and Climate Change
With every passing day, more and more scientists and climate activists let it be known that not just our environment, but humanity itself, is in dire danger due to impending climate change. As climate change is brought into social consciousness, its presence in political consciousness is especially important in order to get done what needs to be done to prevent it’s worst effects; namely, the most imminent need is to lower CO2 emissions globally. However, this can’t be done without political alliances between nations to enact policy changes, as climate change is bound to not just affect a certain region of the world, but everyone on earth. Therefore, game theory is a necessary element in trying to make sense of political presence and power in climate change, as well as coming up with the most efficient and strategic way to create international alliances.
Vann R. Newkirk II in “Using Game Theory to Break the Climate Gridlock” shows us how to begin to construct a matrix that allows us to visualize the costs and payoffs, expressed as cooperation and exploitation, between nations as they consider individual and collaborative effects of fighting climate change and taking advantage of resources. In a 2 by 2 matrix between a hypothetical nation A and nation B with each nation having the ability to either exploit or cooperate, if nation A and B decide to cooperate in fighting climate change, that would result in equal gain for both nations since they are collaborating in mutual policy efforts that will yield long term benefits for both. However, if nation B has reason to believe nation A will definitely cooperate, if the payoff is large enough, nation B will be more inclined to take advantage of nation A’s cooperation and further exploit land, as they know that nation A will be regulating and limiting their own resource consumption. And if nation A starts out by thinking that nation B would be unreliable to cooperate with because they will use nation A’s cooperation as a personal advantage to further exploit, nation A may choose to exploit as well. If nation A and B both choose to exploit, they all lose, and in the scheme of the global world, we all can and will lose. Best responses and dominant strategies for each respective nation, not just in applying it to one pair of countries but to the global scope, are so dependent on previous and contemporary international relations, the level of destructiveness climate change presents within nations and their allies, and financial incentives in exploiting natural resources, using game theory to politically strategize against climate change must take on a more subversive, yet powerful front (Roger Highfield). By using game theory to figure out which nations could potentially collaborate together, combating climate change becomes easier because as we continually figure out who can collaborate with who we can construct a global network that depends on inter-country interactions and alliances to uphold it. In essence, if we find a way to effectively collaborate as a collective rather than under one mega-alliance, we can most effectively find a way to enact powerful environmental policy.