Prisoner's dilemma is a bad reference here.

Prisoner's dilemma is about situation when optimal outcome requires cooperation from all participants.

In the situation with climate change, personal decisions of 99% of Earth population do not really matter.

Mordisquitos 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You are correct that this is not a prisoner's dilemma, it is a tragedy of the commons[0]. However, if a wizard could magically control the "personal decisions of 99% of Earth population" and make them optimal for reducing CO2 emissions then, believe me, climate change could be trivially solved.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

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2III7 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

WDYM personal decisions don't matter? Industrial and agricultural sectors, which both in sum contribute 50% of total greenhouse gas emissions, produce what is in demand from consumers. Another 15% of emissions is from personal vehicles. Changing personal habits is the only way we can ever reach some utopian climate targets. Utopian because old habits die hard.

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smadge 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It is a classic cooperation problem. Perhaps not prisoners dilemma. Perhaps not at individual scale. Probably tragedy of the commons.

Cooperation is not consuming fossil fuels. Defection is consuming fossil fuels.

If you cooperate and other defects you suffer climate impact and expensive energy (expensive everything, worse economic growth than others).

If you defect and other cooperates you suffer climate impact but at least you get cheap energy (cheap everything, more economic growth than others).

People, nations, corporations, etc don’t stop using fossil fuels because they incur a penalty against their competitors if they volunteer to and their competitors don’t.

	▲	AnthonyMouse an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The assumption here is that fossil fuels are actually cheaper. But an electric car pays back the higher upfront cost in fuel savings in significantly fewer miles than most cars will have put on them. Solar generates power at a lower cost per kWh than coal. The fossil fuel industry has to be actively sustained through subsidies and government regulation hostile to alternatives. Maybe that wasn't true 50 years ago before the alternatives got viable and cheap, but if it's not true now then why did we stop subsidizing electric cars while we still subsidize oil companies?