Question

• By themselves, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and India account for almost half of world greenhouse gas emissions causing catastrophic climate change. Many of the poorest countries, including those producing the fewest greenhouse gases, will suffer the most from climate change.
  • Even the rich will suffer from climate change. Use game theory and the prisoners dilemma to explain why China, India, and the United States don't agree to stop polluting.
  • Why don’t countries most threatened, pay the polluters to stop?

Answer 1

Game theory is used to predict what will be the behaviour of the actors in the given situation. And most popularly used models of the game theory are:
1. Chicken game and
2. Prisoners dilemma

By using the Prisoners dilemma, In the given situation, the given states are like a classic example of prisoners in the state of a dilemma, because there exist trust deficit because of lack of communication. The effect is that despite being rational they are not able to choose the best choice. Their best choice is dictated by the objective of avoiding the best possible outcome. It also shows that which party corporates may suffer disproportionately and that which defects will have disproportionate gain.

This is the reason why the USA, China and India don't agree to stop polluting. Even the countries most threatened don't pay polluters to stop pollution because their choices are constrained by the structure.