Climate Change and Political Letdown: Understanding Environmental Degradation through the Prisoner’s Dilemma.’

Abstract

This paper attempts to analyze the political uncertainty surrounding environmental degradation by means of utilizing the game theoretical model. It challenges the popular opinion that views the political exchanges over climate change as a super game where players will eventually learn to cooperate through repeated interactions. Instead the paper argues that the climate change problem is essentially a case of ‘one-shot prisoner’s dilemma’ irrespective of the number of times the players interact with one another. To demonstrate the one-shot prisoner’s dilemma at play, it employs the comparative method to explain the climate politics between the major polluters of the world (US, China, Brazil and India). The debate is analyzed at two distinct levels: Intergenerational and Intragenerational level. Lastly, the paper notes the significance of ‘the immediate threat factor’, which it argues poses a fundamental challenge to the political resolution of the climate change problem.