How game theory will help to fight climate change
hello globe
good that we’re together i’m standing
for you here now pretty
pretty still it used to be different
when i was young
i was always walking and running around
making jokes and people were looking for
me my mother said where are you
so she put me on strings now and then
stay put
don’t make jokes all the time don’t talk
all the time
at school the same happened i was more
outside the classroom
because of insight because was making
jokes making noises
i had a lot of fun because i thought
school’s worth for that anyway many
rules at school and at home
many rules to break so do you know what
did i study
i studied law that’s kind of funny here
and god there are so many rules so many
rules to break but i found actually out
that rules can also help people
can empower people can give people
rights can give people space
in words so it’s good to know the
purpose about the rules
and how to make rules work for people
that’s why i try to study after my study
i worked on a legal aid office in the
netherlands
and giving advice to people who could
not afford a lawyer are giving rights to
people
empower them i did that six year and
then i worked for the environment
ministry
in the netherlands they were looking for
lawyers because they wanted to have a
good treaty
for climate change to agree globally a
law
to get the emissions to zero in the end
so it is a pretty tough rule right
so what we did in the kyoto protocol
that was a climate treaty we organized
it in a different way we gave more
flexibility to countries
instead of having one point year and a
target which they may fail
we organize to give them a budget you
have more space more flexibility to
actually meet the target
so that worked and that made me
interested in the game theory of
mechanism design
and game theory you try to study what
how people behave
if they play games how they play the
rules what incentives they need
and three researchers from the us they
got a nobel prize for a great idea it’s
called mechanism design
they said if you have a public goal for
example
environment health whatever they say you
need to have incentives for people that
you actually are engaged and willing and
happy to meet those targets that’s
mechanism design and a great example of
that
you can see that at least you could see
it in stockholm
that’s the place where they got the
nobel prizes there was a metro station
uh odin plan and the city council
thought let’s do more on health let’s
make our people more healthier
tackle obesity so what did they did is
they changed the
stairs into steps into a keyboard of a
piano
here you see it here and if you step the
stairs you hear music
and it actually worked people were
walking like hell every day
they got rid of the metro station now
because people were working all the time
all the day so no more basically no
that’s not really the reason but it
worked so if you give
the chance for people to have fun when
they walk the stairs instead of taking
the escalators
it helps so you see they’re a tough rule
health
and mechanism designed to help people to
meet the target
so how can we translate and use that for
climate change in europe
this example there are 10 000 companies
big polluters
they need to meet the co2 targets and of
course you can choose to give them all
the same
rules the same tough rules get to zero
there’s not much
flexibility and all companies are
different there are newer ones all the
ones
so they give this idea about a mechanism
design cap and trade
so you have this budget slowly
decreasing over time
you see the piano there so how does cap
and trade gives fun
and still meet the targets by allowing
companies
to they got part of those units of the
budget
and the cleaner companies they invest
earlier they recycle more they lose
renewables
they can sell their allowances and all
the companies that want to invest later
they need to purchase those allowances
so you see that this game of climate
the cleaner companies can win and the
dirtier they need to pay in the end the
climate wins
because the budget it just saw is
decreasing up to zero
and this is a good example of tough
rules and the mechanism design
incentives
to make this game really work another
example of uh
mechanism design is it helps to you all
i think you all like coffee and
chocolate right
did you drink coffee today i had some
great coffee here in wageningen good
nespresso and espresso great but
there’s a big problem with coffee and
chocolate
twenty percent of the global emissions
is because of deforestation
we lose a lot of trees every day because
of your coffee
so what you need to do is to look for
climate neutral coffee
how do we do this i know we in europe we
have our targets we need to get to zero
but the global emissions should also get
to zero so the mechanism design works as
follows
if you pay for this climate neutral
coffee
the governments of those countries there
are almost 50 first nations
they can invest the money in more
sustainable farming more productive
farming
so that they need to cut less trees
there’s some more shade trees over the
coffees
and it actually works so you can reduce
emissions but the reductions can be used
also by the europeans because we
pay for that coffee and reduce the
emissions there as well
so this is also a very good example of
mechanism design and the goal is clear
it’s pretty tough rule you know i didn’t
like rules in the beginning but if you
help people and governments and
companies to
to make them engaged and giving fun and
in rewards to meet the targets it can
actually work
so i say put the uh yeah put the strings
to the emissions but not to the people
because climate is a serious game
thank you