Self Interest and Melting Ice

     Tom Tietenberg and Lynne Lewis discuss the the importance of payoff in climate change policy. They summarize an experiment in which groups are rewarded monetarily for stopping climate change and punished for failure to stop it. In this experiment, the groups were more inclined to fight emissions when the payoff came sooner, and less inclined the longer it took. Parties will also act in their own self interest. This translates to climate change policies in the real world as well. China can be observed in its pursuit of cleaner air. The payoff for China to fix its pollution problem didn't seem feasible due to the time and money it would take to fix it, until recently when it started having adverse affects on human health. This is why China is more concerned recently. The melting of the ice caps in a unique environmental issue. 

    There is no payoff for saving the ice caps as many instances are not recoverable. There is no nation that will see a benefit from stopping the melting, only a best case scenario in which everything stays the same. There is also no single governing body or indigenous people to act in their own self interest in Antarctica, and few afflicted people near the Northern ice shelves. Greenhouse gas emissions are believed to be the primary cause of melting ice, as they raise the global temperature, but it could be as much as 100 years before enough ice melts enough to change the geography of coastal nations. In this instance, the benefit of new regulations would not be realized for a long time, and no financial payoff would be recognized. It is difficult to incentivize these nations. In Chinas air pollution case, their incentive is to improve the health of their people by repairing their own actions. There are not enough people directly affected by melting ice to act in their own self interest.

    Without a foreseeable and tangible payoff, it will be difficult to create new regulations regarding sea ice. Luckily, many countries are seeing other symptoms of raising emission levels, and it is possible that lowering emissions due to other reasons could aid the effort to save the ice. Unfortunately, this is a climate change issue that cannot be resolved. It can only be slowed or stopped, but the damage done is permanent.