As the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow approaches, anxiety and hope are growing in intensity. There is anxiety first of all, because apart from a handful of people who have decided not to see the problem, we can all see the damage we are doing to the planet.
Fires, floods and rising sea levels wreak havoc around the world, while environmental destruction and resulting conflict trigger large-scale refugee displacements, which evoke biblical imagery.
But there is also hope, because some – including climate activist Greta Thunberg, with her encouraging and long-term call for more ambitious action – recognize the scale of the challenge facing humanity. With this in mind, the European Union (EU) launched the Green Deal for Europe, which aims to make the EU carbon neutral by 2050.
The United States also aims to reach net zero emissions by mid-century and recently announced it will double its financial assistance to developing countries struggling with the climate crisis, to the tune of $ 11.4 billion. dollars per year. Some US lawmakers, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey, have proposed a Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to reshuffle the US economy, with a view to eventually eliminating all carbon dioxide emissions from the United States. United States.
But despite these efforts, the fact is that we have started late in the fight against climate change, and now we must accelerate corrective action if humanity is not to follow the same trajectory as the dinosaurs.
The climate crisis is a global problem that requires the intervention of all countries, but many developing economies, especially some of the most vulnerable to the climate, do not have the financial means to take sufficient action. Some emerging economies, including South Africa and much of South and Southeast Asia, are heavily dependent on coal and will need to undergo a green transition that will not be without disruptive effects.
So we need a collective commitment to design support systems – financial and scientific – to help all countries contribute in their own way. The 2015 Paris climate agreement was a diplomatic success, garnering support from nearly 200 countries. But the world is now falling short of the Paris target – limiting global warming to 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels.
PHOTO ANDY BUCHANAN, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
Ocean Rebellion protest in Glascow, Scotland, where COP26 will take place.
Real will or hypocrisy?
Will the Glasgow rally catalyze real action? Thunberg recently warned that “the leaders are going to say, ‘We will do this, we will do that’, but in the end, they will not do anything.” Furthermore, widespread frustration with leaders’ insufficient climate ambitions is not confined to young people. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II expressed a similar sentiment, saying that “it is really annoying to hear them talk – and to see that they are not doing anything”.
Desperation like this is natural. When we see climate action getting so far behind the rhetoric, we inevitably wonder if all this talk is pure hypocrisy.
But this is not necessarily the case. If we are to bequeath a liveable planet to future generations, it is essential to understand why there can be a disjunction between what each person intends to do and how the group actually delivers on its promises. Iconic games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma have shown this to be the case in the realm of selfish decision-making.
Mobilizing the determination and commitment needed to tackle the climate crisis is a problem for social science and moral philosophy as much as it is for politicians.
Contrary to what neoclassical economics might have us believe, modern economics does not function as a series of impersonal markets solely motivated by the aspirations of individual actors. On the contrary, as Mariana Mazzucato notes in her book Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, markets are “embedded within rules, norms and contracts that affect organizational behavior, interactions and institutional designs”.
Greta’s dilemma
It is therefore a mistake to equate collective action with the sum of individual intentions. When people say they want to do everything to prevent a climate catastrophe but don’t do much, it may not be hypocrisy. They may be grappling with what I described in a recent article as “Greta’s Dilemma” 1..
In this game, a group of people initially pursue their own interests, regardless of how the damage to the environment caused by their actions will harm future generations. If individuals then become respectful of the environment and take corrective action, traditional economic models predict that such a change will lead to improvements in the well-being of future generations.
But in the complex and strategically connected world we live in today, the outcome may be different.
Greta’s dilemma illustrates the paradoxical result that individuals who collectively become environmentally friendly harms the environment more.
Similar to one of those paradoxical paintings by M. C. Escher, it is the interweaving of small individual steps that lead the group to a destination they have not sought. Far from helping future generations, they end up harming them.
Certainly, this game is deliberately designed to highlight the paradox. But it shows that in today’s complex global economy, we need to pay much more attention to the strategic foundations of human interaction in order to design policies that can help us avoid climate catastrophe.
It might sound like a narrow-minded academic argument, but it isn’t. If we are to achieve Greta Thunberg’s ambition, which in my opinion is truly shared by many individuals – including many leaders – then we must use Greta’s dilemma as the basis for designing the policies and institutions we need. .
So while we are right to worry that leaders are not doing enough at COP26, we also need to be aware that there is a scientific problem with this issue. On climate change and other issues, we need to understand the social and economic game we are playing, and try to change its rules so that our individual moral intentions are better reflected in the collective results.
* The author is also a professor of economics at Cornell University and a non-resident researcher at the Brookings Institution
1. Read ” Convention, Morals and Strategy: Greta’s Dilemma and the Incarceration Game ” (in English)
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2021
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