Unified World Climate Action? It’s Not in the Cards

Want to paralyze energy policy making? Just call a world conference and try for consensus. Want to maximize public apathy regarding greenhouse gas issues? Just do a few more Copenhagens.
 
There’s a game that psychologists use to understand how group decisions are made, particularly when strategies to achieve benefits for the group as a whole increase the risk to individual participants. In other words, when do players put the good of the group above their own (individual) good?
 
The game uses special cards that are dealt so that only one card in each player’s hand has a red dot, and the other cards are blank. The play passes from player to player and on each turn the player puts a card, face down in the “pot” in the center of the table. During the game the players keep their cards covered, but otherwise they’re encouraged to carry on conversations with the other players. The game ends when each player has only one card left. Then the cards in the pot are turned over and each player shows the one card left in their hand. Every red dotted card in the pot is worth $20 cash and the pot total is divided among the players. A red-dotted card remaining in a player’s hand is worth $10.
 
Players can maximize their earnings if everyone puts a red dot card in the pot. However, the minimal risk strategy is to secretly or even deceptively keep the dotted card while trying to convince others to put theirs in the pot.
 
The results? Hardly any dotted cards end up in the pot regardless of the age, income or education bracket of the test group. Changing the number of cards and the reward amounts doesn’t change the outcome much either.
 
The card game illustrates a depressing fact about human behavior. We can be surprisingly altruistic when it comes to affairs of the heart such as parental love or even patriotism. But not when it comes to business, economics and politics. Those decisions, no matter how well dressed to appear differently, are mostly about maximizing personal gain and/or reducing personal risk. The group benefit becomes no more than secondary.
 
That’s also why “Kumbaya” consensus processes are seldom effective, and world climate change conferences such as Kyoto and Copenhagen didn’t work out as hoped for. Copenhagen, in particular, raised expectations that the world community would unite to do something good when, in fact, there was little unity and not much was accomplished, at least from the public’s viewpoint. There was plenty of discussion, bluster and heat, but in the end most participants left with the red dot card still tightly clenched in their hands.
 
As a result, despite the blogs, books, a movie, the ubiquitous “green” prefix, and various protests, public anxiety around the topic of climate change has settled down to a dull yawn.

About the Author

Editor:

Paul Mauldin

Paul earned his B.S. and an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of California-Berkeley and is a registered professional engineer. He has worked in the energy industry for more than 25 years, developing and implementing advanced energy technologies. As research director for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. he pioneered methodologies used in the design, maintenance and control of energy delivery systems. As a consultant he has provided guidance to utilities and the vendor community, nationally and internationally.