‘Targeted punishments’ against countries could tackle climate change

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/145targeted_punishments146_against/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]‘Targeted punishments’ against countries could tackle climate change[/font]

[font size=3]Targeted punishments could provide a path to international climate change cooperation, new research in game theory has found.

Conducted at the University of Warwick, the research suggests that in situations such as climate change, where everyone would be better off if everyone cooperated but it may not be individually advantageous to do so, the use of a strategy called 'targeted punishment' could help shift society towards global cooperation.

Despite the name, the ‘targeted punishment’ mechanism can apply to positive or negative incentives. The research argues that the key factor is that these incentives are not necessarily applied to everyone who may seem to deserve them. Rather, rules should be devised according to which only a small number of players are considered responsible at any one time.

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"The idea", said Dr Johnson, "is not to punish everyone who is defecting, but rather to devise a rule whereby only a small number of defectors are considered at fault at any one time. For example, if you want to get a group of people to cooperate on something, you might arrange them on an imaginary line and declare that a person is liable to be punished if and only if the person to their left is cooperating while they are not. This way, those people considered at fault will find themselves under a lot more pressure than if responsibility were distributed, and cooperation can build up gradually as each person decides to fall in line when the spotlight reaches them."

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http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/8/150223

[elleng]

1. Watch it try to 'punish' the U.S!

state by state, like states inhibiting use of solar panels to curry favor with oil producers, for example.