Environment and Society. Paul Robbins

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      Chapter Menu

      Controlling Carbon?

      The Prisoner’s Dilemma

      The Tragedy of the Commons

      The Evidence and Logic of Collective Action

      Crafting Sustainable Environmental Institutions

      Are All Commoners Equal? Does Scale Matter?

      Thinking with Institutions

Controlling Carbon?

      There is a growing consensus on the science of climate change and the urgency of the problem. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose job it is to vet the science surrounding global warming, global temperatures are rising, sea-level rise is expected, water availability may be impeded, and extreme weather events are likely to become more common and more severe. These changes will be felt unevenly but no country will be immune to such effects.

      Given the widespread and severe nature of the problem, why are global carbon emissions so hard to control? One might think of many good reasons for this to be true. People tend to ignore problems they cannot see, governments are under the influence of oil companies, and so on.

      One compelling argument holds that the root of the problem is that carbon quite simply does not stay put. With every combustion event (driving a car, burning a log, firing a coal plant for electricity, etc.) the carbon that is released quickly finds its way into the atmosphere. Carbon released in one country is – instantly – a burden shared by all countries. From the point of view of any individual country, moreover, carbon reductions are not “free,” since they require creating new rules, potentially reducing or redirecting economic production. A “carbon-reduced” product – whether a car, computer, or vegetable – may be more difficult to produce than its “status quo” counterpart. If such a product is more expensive as a result, it may not be competitive on a global market, especially if it must compete against products produced where carbon reductions have not been imposed. Many governments, including that of the United States, therefore express fear that if they make sacrifices in this direction while others do not, they will no longer be competitive. The benefits of carbon reduction, in a parallel way, would be experienced by all countries, but must be paid for by individual countries.

      For many environmental problems, costs are often borne collectively, while benefits accrue to individuals; on the other hand, individual costs may lead to collective benefits. Nations must cooperate where there is no “super-government” to impose environmental laws and where there are few or no punitive measures for not cooperating. Such mismatches mean that hoping for spontaneous global action on climate change might be unrealistic. Arguably, some kind of rules and trust must be established to cooperate when incentives constantly lure people and states to follow their own self-interest … toward collective planetary ruin. In this chapter, we address this persistent and vexing problem: How, if at all, can rules and norms of global behavior be fashioned to encourage shared costs and collective benefits? At what scale is cooperation possible?

      The Prisoner’s Dilemma

      Such questions are of universal concern since problems of this sort are ubiquitous. There are countless examples from our own daily ecologies as well as those around the globe.

Neighbors, for example, need to pull weeds from their lawns to keep them from spreading across property lines. By failing to do so, any one non-cooperating neighbor enjoys some benefits from their neighbors’ sweaty work (fewer dandelions in their yard), but simultaneously provides an ongoing seed source for dandelions that might spread to the lawns of others.

      It is tempting for someone to spill the small quantity of paint left over from renovating a bathroom into a storm drain rather than take the time to dispose of it legally at an approved dump site. Should a single household be the only one to behave in this way, it enjoys a lower labor burden and benefits from the healthy environment resulting from the majority of hard-working cooperative neighbors who do not dump paint into public waterways. But since such temptation exists to all, the incidence of paint dumping is far higher than anyone individually desires.

      Nor is the situation of a homeowner in urban America or Europe entirely different from that of a villager in rural India. There, the benefits from a community forest include the ability to graze livestock in the shade of trees and the availability of seeds and pods that fall from trees, among other resources. These collectively enjoyed benefits are only available if the trees of the forest are not cut down for fuel or construction timber. It is inviting for any individual household to cut down a tree or two for their own purposes, making only an incremental change in the density and health of the village forest. As long as others refrain from doing the same, these minimal costs are spread across the village and the benefits to the household, which may need to go great distances to collect fuelwood otherwise, are obvious. But again, since the incentive to break the rules is shared by all, and in anticipation of the fact that others may well “cheat” and cut trees, householders might well be tempted to cut trees as soon and as quickly as they can, in an effort to gain resources before their neighbors do.

      In all of these cases, cooperation is necessary for the best outcome, but an incentive exists to take a “free ride” and let others invest time or money or restrain their behavior while we do not. Since the incentive exists for everyone, the possibility of total failure always looms.

Prisoner’s