Abstract: The problem of climate change is essentially about cooperation over a common resource. It is challenging because it is global, and countries are free to cooperate or decline. The good thing is that we know a lot about what properties of agreements make cooperation work. The bad thing is that our current approaches, such as the Paris Agreement, get almost all of these properties exactly wrong. In the talk, I will explain why this means that the Paris Agreement is exceedingly unlikely to succeed. I’ll also attempt to be constructive, and look at what agreements which might actually work in practice would have to look like.

Bio: To see Carl Edward Rasmussen's bio, please click the link: mlg.eng.cam.ac.uk/carl.