From the “just wait until they hear about Al Gore’s 24 hour demand for a carbon tax” department comes this story from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology
People don’t put a high value on climate protection
Without further incentives selfish behaviour will continue to dominate
People are bad at getting a grip on collective risks. Climate change is a good example of this: the annual climate summits have so far not led to specific measures. The reason for this is that people attach greater value to an immediate material reward than to investing in future quality of life. Therefore, cooperative behaviour in climate protection must be more strongly associated with short-term incentives such as rewards or being held in high esteem.
Would you rather have €40 (about $55 USD) or save the climate?
When the question is put in such stark terms, the common sense answer is obviously: “stop climate change!” After all, we are well-informed individuals who act for the common good and, more particularly, for the good of future generations. Or at least that’s how we like to think of ourselves.
Unfortunately, the reality is rather different. Immediate rewards make our brains rejoice and when such a reward beckons we’re happy to behave cooperatively. But if achieving a common goal won’t be rewarded until a few weeks have gone by, we are rather less euphoric and less cooperative. And if, instead of money, we’re offered the prospect of a benefit for future generations, our enthusiasm for fair play wanes still further.
An international team of researchers led by Manfred Milinski from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology has shown how poorly we manage collective risk. “Our experiment is based on an essay which Thomas Schelling, the Nobel laureate in economics, wrote back in 1995”, explains Milinski. Schelling pointed out that it was today’s generation which would have to make the efforts for climate protection, while it would be future generations who would gain the benefits. So the people of the present have little motivation actually to do anything. Does this gloomy theory withstand experimental scrutiny?
To find out, the researchers had to convert this problem into a simple experimental situation. They had the participants play a modified public goods game. Such games are very common in behavioural economics and always follow the same pattern. The participants receive a certain amount of money and are invited to donate a proportion of it over a number of rounds. The donated money is doubled and this amount is divided equally between the players. Anything which was not donated goes directly in the player’s pocket. The most profitable behaviour in such games is to donate nothing at all and simply benefit from the altruism of the other players.
The researchers modified the rules to incorporate averting impending climate change into the game. Each player received a starting fund of €40 and, playing over ten rounds, was able to decide how much of it to keep or donate. The donated money was invested in a climate change advertising campaign and was thus a simulated investment in climate protection. There were also bonus payments: those groups which donated more than half of their total fund were symbolically able to avoid dangerous climate change and were paid an additional €45 per participant. If the group donated less, all the players had a 90% probability of losing their endowment.
Three scenarios were devised to model the fact that the benefits of saving the climate are only felt in the future. Players from successful groups were paid their endowment either on the day after the experiment (scenario 1) or seven weeks later (scenario 2). In scenario 3, the endowment was not paid out to the players at all, but was instead invested in planting oak trees and thereby in climate protection. Over their lifetime, the trees will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and their wood will be a valuable building material for future generations.
However, not one of the eleven groups which was offered the prospect of planting oak trees achieved the donation target. On average, just €57 were paid into the climate account instead the objective of €120. That’s less than half of the target amount. In the first scenario, seven out of ten groups were successful, the participants donating on average €108, while the players in the second scenario still donated €83 (four out of ten groups were successful). “The result of our experiment paints a gloomy picture of the future”, summarises Milinski. “We were unfortunately able to confirm Schelling’s prediction – it’s a disaster.”
Climate change is the largest public goods game that has ever been played and the whole of humanity are its players. The problem is that while we are now making the payments, the fruits of our efforts will only be enjoyed very much later and they will be shared among the whole of humanity. We ourselves or our children will thus benefit only very slightly from any restrictions we place on our lives today and our motivation actually to do something is correspondingly low.
These results make it clear that if people are to invest in climate protection, they must have short-term incentives to do so. “It’s not enough simply to point to the benefits future generations will enjoy”, says Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, one of the authors of the study. “Climate protection will only be effective if the people making the effort will also be able to obtain a short-term material benefit from doing so, for instance by exporting climate-friendly technology.”
Related articles
- No ‘instant gratification’ in climate makes for a poor motivator (wattsupwiththat.com)
Beatings will continue until attitude improves.
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Jquip,
Hey, thanks for engaging an intriguing ‘lifeboat ethics’ consideration.
Their lifeboat meme is wrong on every conceivable level: non-existence of any moral dilemma; arbitrary and convenient ethics constraints, distortions of the significance of the social nature of humans, no necessary and sufficient fundamental concept of the nature of human beings, Malthusian bias toward the past or the status quo, incorrect epistemology (perceptual base not conceptual base), irrational dual reality metaphysics, non-logical arguments, etc, etc, ad nauseam. But, my focus is only that the most fundamental premise of the Planck Institute’s lifeboat meme (see my previous comment) is false. Anything that follows from that is the water from a poisoned intellectual / scientific spring.
I would like to engage in the other ad nauseam stuff though. Shall we?
John
“The fruits of our labor …” will be misery and death. And the world will say, “Thanks for that!” and swing the axe. “Und wann der Kopf fallt, sag ich ‘Hopla!'”
“Without further incentives selfish behaviour will continue to dominate.”
Headline news! You heard it first here folks.
Someone should inform all these people and all liberals that someone named Adam Smith, in
“The Wealth of Nations,” did a smashing job of describing a system that turns self-interest to public good. It is called “the free market system.” In that system, all incentives are perfectly aligned so that self-interested behavior contributes to the most efficient distribution of goods. Wow! Who would of thunk it? It will never get taught at the ordinary US university.
When I read garbage like this from an Institute of Knowlage. My trust fails completely in their prognostications I hear on the news and radios. If they can’t get something simple like Climate Change through their thick skulls, I’m not trusting anything else they say one iota.
Utta, utta garbage.
The Max Plank Institute is the home of that Dr Schticklerburger (or whatever) who wants Germany to take over the world and tell them how to do things, isn’t it.
Stuff the climate. Where can I get that girl and dinner for just €40?
Most of the rational people I know, take a dim view of being told, (by anybody but their boss) that they must do something; ANY something. Left to their own ends they make better choices than those who dictate to them.
There was this problem in Florida (I believe). HHS complained to some folks down there, that there was a serious shortage of housing suitable for the “hearing impaired” deaf to you and me. What good is a doorbell to someone who is stone deaf and lives there ?
So this community came up with a project, and they designed and built a special housing complex, oriented to the special needs of the hearing impaired; and they loved it, and moved in in droves, occupying the whole facility.
So now the place has been sued by HHS, because of the lack of diversity at this complex; there are only deaf people living there. Well that’s exactly who it was built for at the insistence of HHS. Well but you have to diversify, and get a more representative community living there. Well what on earth use is a house without a doorbell to somebody who is blind; excuse me; vision impaired, and can’t see the flashing green door light ?
That’s why rational people would tell the Planck Institute, to go and jump in the Baltic Sea; hopefully this December.
John Whitman: “But, my focus is only that the most fundamental premise of the Planck Institute’s lifeboat meme (see my previous comment) is false. ”
The only fundamental premise I see is: “Schelling pointed out that it was today’s generation which would have to make the efforts for climate protection, while it would be future generations who would gain the benefits. So the people of the present have little motivation actually to do anything.”
Within this, we’re either talking about a Starship Meme, or a future contingent + time machine meme. And secondarily about a complete lack of now interest about a Mighty Maybe ‘possible’ future harm. One that may or may not occur, and in which it will be a benefit long before the gains decrease and go the other way. In some intergenerational future. (At least if I remember my IPCC dribblings well enough.)
So if you assume that there will be a future change. And that the future change will pass through and beyond benefit. And that the future change will pass through and beyond a decrease to the current status quo to harm compared to the present. And that the future state will be a ‘strict’ harm to the future generation rather than a relative harm to the present generation. And that Lifeboats can cooperate as a Starship without a tragic commons, then: Yes, we should expect under all these assumptions that people would quite likely, and quite rationally, prefer a night out on the town.
But if you assume the fundamental premise is simply that people are swayed more by the consequences of their choices if they can *reliably connect* cause and effect then… that’s been know behavioural stuff for ages. From raising children to training dogs. And this just reiterates that the same is true with climate concepts.
But if the climate itself is the fundamental premise, then the conclusion is a complete non-sequitor unless the immediate incentives are applied to China, by the Chinese. Even if you grant every one of the assumptions and prior commitments to even speak about the maybe-possible-future-benefiterrorism of energy production.
“””””…..Would you rather have €40 (about $55 USD) or save the climate?
When the question is put in such stark terms, the common sense answer is obviously: “stop climate change!” After all, we are well-informed individuals who act for the common good and, more particularly, for the good of future generations. Or at least that’s how we like to think of ourselves…….””””””
Well I don’t know where the hell on this earth, one can sit at a window seat overlooking a nice beach with an ocean view, and toast one another with Champagne, over a shrimp appetizer feast, and have a real meal for US$55, including the 18% “gratuity” (bribe) .
Maybe $155.
Now I did the Wednesday $3.29 chicken pot pie special, for lunch today at Kentucky Fried Chicken, and I will not be surprised, if my wife brings home three more of them, for dinner tonight. But in Germany, you really can eat dinner for two for $55 ?? That’s amazing !
If you live in the U.S., you already spent over $250 on climate change, so you paid your indulgence already. Now you can sit back, relax, and wait for the earth to cool. No more worries.
Re: u.k.(us) says:
October 23, 2013 at 1:36 pm
“Therefore, cooperative behaviour in climate protection must be more strongly associated with short-term incentives such as rewards or being held in high esteem.”
I missed this one (the article being almost unbearable).
So they are proposing, when someone does something like contribute their money (perhaps forcibly), the rest of the population “will” hold them in high esteem.
The delusion, it burns…
Paul Homewood says:
October 23, 2013 at 11:17 am
I think Paul has nailed the argument in a unique way with respects to curbing C02 for the future. There is no good future for this world without man contribution to CO2.
“People are bad at getting a grip on collective risks.”
Such as…
Sad to say, the EPA has already decided how you will spend the money if you live in the US. You don’t get the dinner. It does not matter what you think–your energy bills will go up no matter whether it helps the environment or not. That train left the station some time ago, and voters in the US have not helped the matter.
Re: “That train left the station … .”
Take heart! The tracks end just a few miles ahead … .
Congress still, for all its anemia, IS. Congress can defund the EPA and amend or abrogate its enabling legislation and or the Clean Air Act any time it wants.
And it will. It is just a matter of time.
… as the above “study” shows — the average voter isn’t buying what the EPA’s selling anymore.
Chin up! Shoulders back! Aaaand off we march …… to VICTORY.
In the end, TRUTH WINS.
There is a wise old Australian saying-
“Always back the horse called self interest,son.It’ll be the only one trying.”-Jack Lang.New South Wales Labor Premier.
Did I miss something?
Did the test start by excluding sceptics?
Did they say “for this exercise assume AGW is a fact”
Did they even ask the participants about their beliefs?
To make it realistic, you need an option to spend your €40 to get in on a scheme to force the other players to pay you their shares to save the the world.
I lost it at this “And if, instead of money, we’re offered the prospect of a benefit for future generations, our enthusiasm for fair play wanes still further.”
+++++++++++++
The phrase should be re written as follows:
And if, instead of money, we’re offered the prospect of a benefit for future generations (by spending someone else’s money, borrowing the rest and putting the bill on future generations for the gift we are giving them now), our enthusiasm increases dramatically.
There – I fixed it… because that’s what we have today. The promise of something untrue, but it won’t cost you a dime of your own money but the ignorant will feel good and vote.
Janice Moore says:
October 23, 2013 at 11:03 am
+++++++
right on… and I would add that most people who vote for saving the planet only do so if they think there is immediate benefit to them – and if they don’t have to pay for it themselves. What proportion of solar and wind farm purchasers would but them if they were not given some immediate subsidy or financial incentive? Answer: Close to zero.
And I stand by that comment!
Rhoda R says:
October 23, 2013 at 3:50 pm
“The Max Plank Institute is the home of that Dr Schticklerburger (or whatever) who wants Germany to take over the world and tell them how to do things, isn’t it.”
No; Schellnhuber is at the PIK in Potsdam; which is not one of the Max Planck Institutes.
But MPI does what it can to partake in the climate subsidy grant grabbing. Often by assisting technology developments, which is perfectly fine.
I didn’t know that they also produce social engineering crap like this. Maybe they’re optimizing their revenue and go for the mush skulls of politicians now and leave all those complicated Tesla coils and semiconductors behind.
What this paper seems to point out is that CO2 will not be regulated voluntarily by the general public because individuals are not concerned with the future collective good. Therefore governments should provide incentive for the general population to protect them from their own self interests. In order to do this then we penalize CO2 emitters or reward those who don’t emit CO2 and by some mechanism this must be done on a global scale. To me, this idea seems to be the short sighted one. If we (by government taxation and re-distribution) invest in “climate change initiatives” then we are pulling resources from other endeavors, say capital expenditures or R&D from industry. So which approach, the free market profit based approach or the collectivist good approach will produce the most benefit for future generations?
Slightly OT, but…
Last night, I watched the first two episodes of a BBC nature series called “AFRICA.” The usually reliable CAGW shill David Attenborough was the host.
I was pleasantly surprised that there was NO discussion of CAGW, even when the show seemed to be lining up easy shots on the issue.
Discussion of a drought in East Africa described it as a cyclical, recurring process and showed animals coping (with difficulty) and the drought ending and animals recovering.
Pictures (and discussion) of the glaciers in the Mountains of the Moon showed lots of snow and no mention of “shrinking” glaciers!
It was the most expensive nature documentary ever made and was 4 years being produced. There has been articles in the British press about the film “playing on people’s emotions,” but the reference is to film of a baby elephant dying, not the usual preaching about man’s destruction of the Earth! I really never thought I would see a wildlife documentary without an attempt to blame every unpleasant event in nature on a beneficial, trace atmospheric gas.
By the way, the series is beautifully filmed.
Who came up with the idea that we can guarantee “perfect” weather for a mere $55?