76: Catalytic cooperation

Not one giant intractable problem, but many complicated, winnable conflicts in our backyards

Highland Raid, Rosa Bonheur, 1860

Last week I was going to write about a couple of poli sci papers that have been getting some buzz because they suggest big shifts in how we view local climate action as a path to global climate action, but I got all doped out on melange instead so we’re going to do it this week. Don’t worry, I will make it fun and maybe get some burns in along the way.

A special section in the November issue of Global Environmental Politics drew some attention in climate circles because it challenges a long-held assumption that climate change should be considered primarily a collective action problem—which basically means that nobody wants to be the one to sacrifice something because it benefits the collective—instead arguing that local incentives and power imbalances are far more important factors blocking climate action. Authors then build on that idea by proposing a model for how and why those local battles are won, and the mechanisms by which they cascade into global change.

One of the articles in particular got some media coverage when they came out, and David Wallace-Wells briefly wrote about one of them in his latest big climate article, which was good. But I want to give them some more attention here because I think whether intentional or not they make an unusually empirical argument in favor of the grassroots movement building approach to climate action. Maybe more importantly, they offer rare cause for hope, in that the necessary change is not presented as one giant intractable problem, but rather, many complicated—but winnable—conflicts happening in all of our backyards.

Come on and take a free ride

For many years, climate negotiators have believed that nations fail to take action largely because they don’t want to do the work or pay the price if everyone else isn’t doing it too. Because the benefits are collective and the costs are individual, there’s no incentive for individual action without some binding global agreement. This is called a collective action problem, in which people don’t want to give something up if there’s a chance other people are going to fake lift, so-called “free ridership.” Sometimes this is referred to as a “tragedy of the commons” or a complicated version of “the prisoner’s dilemma.”

Collective action problems are very difficult problems to solve, as you have to get everyone on board with some kind of pact, otherwise individual actors will be like hey what about that guy. It is also, the authors found, totally not the reason nations and other governments don’t take action. At least it’s not the main reason.

Instead, argue political scientists Michaël Aklin and Matto Mildenberger, climate change is more of a “distributive conflict” problem. This means that power struggles at the domestic level are far greater obstacles to action, and by their analysis, nations and sub-state actors have been more than willing to make sweeping changes, independently of whether or not other nations are doing their part too. 

Why is this a big deal? Because for decades, international negotiators have thought that they had to resolve free ridership as the main obstacle, through treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. When really, it seems free rider concerns were mostly rhetorical excuses for inaction—“governments implement climate policies regardless of what other countries do, and they do so whether a climate treaty dealing with free-riding has been in place or not.” Within each government or community, there are some actors that want climate action to happen, there are other actors that do not, and the outcome depends on who has more power. 

Climate policies create new economic winners and losers. Sharp divisions in the material interests of political and economic stakeholders subsequently trigger distributive conflict over climate policy making. Conflicts over material benefits are further reinforced by ideological struggles among politicians, voters, and interest groups.

They cite two main families of conflict—special interest control and sectoral and ideological balance of power. In the first, those who stand to benefit from inaction hold undue influence on policy makers. In the second, there’s concern climate policy outcomes will change the balance of power. This will sound very familiar to anyone who works in organizing or applies any kind of power analysis to climate change. But the paper offers data to back it up, looking at the widespread proliferation of climate policies despite US free ridership in the form of withdrawal from treaties (which is our favorite thing to do, withdrawing from treaties did you know that we reversed our decision to join a treaty banning landmines? We did! We are in a select group of pro-landmine countries.)

The paper also calls out the frequent concern over free ridership cited by American politicians as a smokescreen. For example, the Byrd-Hagel resolution in 1997 that opposed US participation in any international climate agreement that exempted developing countries from carbon pollution limits, which is a real morning vineyard worker move. The paper points out that Byrd and Hagel were influenced by labor and industry interests in their constituencies and also climate deniers, rather than any international conflict over free ridership. That resolution started a pattern that has come up repeatedly in US climate policymaking and negotiations.

What is critical here is that the decision-making process was almost entirely driven by internal conflicts within the executive branch and the legislature. The individuals pushing for the reversal of US climate commitments were not conditional cooperators but unconditional noncooperators with ties to carbon-intensive economic sectors; these individuals simply used the rhetoric of collective action theory to help legitimize their domestic bargaining position.

One way that you could misread the paper’s conclusions, which the authors explicitly warn against, is that they are suggesting that all climate action should be local, or that they discount the need for global treaties and negotiation. This paper is not an argument against global climate action. Rather, they find that domestic conflicts and international negotiations both play a role, and have significant impact on each other. Climate change is many battles and it is also one battle. But when international negotiators concern themselves primarily with busting cheaters—rather than supporting pro-climate actors so they can overcome opposition—they’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

Catalyst to cascade

The other paper from this issue that I want to get into is by public policy researcher Thomas Hale, who uses the distributive conflict article as a springboard to explore the interplay between local conflicts and global change. He arrives at a different, more nuanced model of collective action, which he calls “catalytic cooperation.” Hale argues that even though we can better understand climate change as driven by domestic power struggles, they are still part of collective action toward global change. It just works differently than one big treaty that makes everyone do something.

Hale points out three unique features of the climate problem that set it apart from common ideas about how different actors behave.

First, while it’s often assumed that climate action is a collective good that requires individual sacrifice, there are actually “joint products” that provide a combined public good and private benefit. While Hale doesn’t make this point, this is largely the thrust of the Green New Deal. That climate action isn’t just a big carbon tax etc, but a whole bunch of policy decisions, many of which have profound positive benefits on individual communities—better transportation, less time in traffic, clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, new industrial sectors and jobs, etc. That’s a much better political landscape than one pain in the ass thing thing that nobody wants to do but everybody has to do.

Second, different actors will experience very different costs and benefits as a result of climate action, aka “preference heterogeneity.” As I like to say when defending my love of Jethro Tull, different people like different things. This is what the previous paper referred to as climate change policy “creating new winners and new losers.” This might seem like a liability, but it’s actually good news. The more variability in benefits and costs, the more chances you have that some of those people will take up the fight. And you don’t need all of them to do so, at least not at first.

Third, climate action offers increasing returns. More benefits are unlocked for more people, and more people join team climate. One straightforward example is the reduced cost of renewables over time. Another is that climate wins form new constituencies that increase their power over time. An example that comes to mind is PUSH Buffalo, a nonprofit that does energy efficiency overhauls, neighborhood renewable energy projects, and job training to directly benefit locals. They’ve not only revitalized their own community, PUSH has also become a force within state politics as constituents reaped the benefits of local action. One final area of increasing returns will be familiar to anyone who read the CP issue about Robert Frank’s work on behavioral contagion. Climate action changes norms.

As Finnemore and Sikkink argue, norms progress through a life cycle from emergence, to a “norm cascade” in which they become widely followed in practice, to internalization, in which they are embedded in the beliefs and preferences of most actors. As more action takes place, more of this self-reinforcing logic applies.

Hale’s other big conclusion is that we can create “catalytic institutions” that spur these processes along. The paper argues that the Paris Agreement could potentially be one of these catalytic institutions, but is also careful to point out that the conclusion is not that the Paris Agreement itself is a perfect version of this or that this is why the agreement is the way that it is. But a bottom-up approach could have the intended outcome if it can act as a facilitator in various ways for those cascading climate victories, backing up the leaders on the ground and helping to replicate their victories.

This part of the argument gives me some pause because I’ve become pretty skeptical of the Paris Agreement for the simple fact that it just doesn’t seem to be working. You might also read this as a suggestion that weak, incremental commitments are all that is necessary, which we know is not the case. But the point here is not that the Paris Agreement is the right fix, but that if we better understood its role and the problem it is solving (power struggles) it could work.

There’s also nothing inherently weak about how this model plays out. “The number and diversity of sub- and nonstate actors makes them excellent laboratories for climate policy,” the author states. Such local advances could be as radical and transformative as leaders on the ground are able to pull off, and then spread like a fractal. And the paper doesn’t discount the need for policy interventions that basically force recalcitrant actors to do what we need them to do.

From immovable to unstoppable

The thing that really interested me about this research is as a potential framework for connecting the grassroots to global change, which is always a tough sell. The grassroots movement-building perspective on climate, which I largely share, says the only just approach to mitigating and adapting for climate change, and indeed, the only way to create durable policy that forces compliance, begins with community, particularly those impacted by climate consequences the most.

But, admittedly, how community level solutions translate to the global change necessary—how these distributed fights lead to a top-to-bottom transformation of the world’s economy—is usually presented as something of a matter of faith. At least, it’s a non-linear process. This research is one attempt chart the path.

You could imagine it going something like this: Global institutions do everything they can to support and empower climate leaders, put a thumb on the scale to help them win. Communities build power to make extreme changes and others replicate it until it becomes the norm. We hit a series of tipping points that accumulate until it’s far more than just climate leaders taking action. Those same institutions help larger currents emerge that make it impossible for holdouts to resist—a combination of economic reality, social pressure, and strict regulation.

It also suggests a more hopeful, if more complicated, way to think about the problem of climate change. One of the big sources of climate pessimism and certain soft forms of climate denial is the idea that there are some immovable tendencies in human nature that make this problem particularly difficult, if not impossible, to solve. Essential to that argument is that the solution to climate change requires sacrifice for a larger good, and we just never do that. In his now-notorious article “Losing Earth,” Nathaniel Rich writes, “These theories share a common principle: that human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations.” While Rich’s prisoner’s dilemma pits the present against the future, he’s describing a collective action problem. Nobody wants to do the hard thing even if it’s the right thing.

That idea has fueled repeated failed attempts at top down policies and blunt, market-based instruments to incent all of us selfish people to act a certain way. But what if that view of what’s holding back climate action has always been kinda bullshit? An excuse for the powerful. Rich drew much criticism in his article for basically overlooking special interests and power dynamics in his narrative, favoring fatalist explanations about the way people are hard-wired.

But the reality is, people support and oppose climate action for all kinds of reasons. They win and they lose for all kinds of reasons. None of them are fixed. That’s a messier kind of problem, but the more variables there are, the more there are to change.

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More Lessons of Arrakis

Pretty fun issue last week, right? In retrospect, between Dune and Jethro Tull, it was probably the Boomeriest Crisis Palace to date. But I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed the responses I got from folks. Turns out, people have thoughts on Dune!

My friend Jacob, who is a fan and has read all of the books, gave me the scoop on Paul’s eventual downfall. “It’s get progressively worse until he finally sacrifices himself for the greater good, starts the cycle again, which really is a depressing message...can’t change anything, just play your role and enjoy the ride.” He also notes that Paul sort of turns into a sandworm, god which makes so much sense! At first he’s learning to ride these dangerous and unpredictable forces of change and he masters it until, finally, he has become one himself. Damn could have used that in the original review!

My very funny and smart Uncle Ed recalled first reading it in the 70s and remarked on the complete separation between transport and government, so for any planetary government to invade or wage war, it had to pay for it. He also highlighted some of his favorite lesser known sequels, "Children of Dune," "Aunts and Uncles of Dune," "I was a Teenage Dune," "Dune Redux," and "There's Money in Them Thar Dunes.” He also recommends Iain Banks’ Culture series for similarly impressive world building.

And my friend Farhad sent me this very important and relevant tweet:

platonic solid snake @joshmillard

FREMEN BORAT: my knife

Which someone responded to with:

Elt●ns Kūns @EltonsKuns

@joshmillard Fremen Borat: SSPICE!

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A word about Substack

Some of you may be following some garbage anti-trans and otherwise hateful stuff that Substack is allowing and sometimes paying writers to publish and also that it’s starting to generally seem like the “publishing platform for assholes,” a certain type of self-proclaimed centrist dude who considers himself the truly oppressed amongst us. Readers will know I just cannot stand these guys and am not thrilled to be using the same email platform as them. I tend to agree with Ashley Feinberg that for now, Substack is still “up for grabs.” But I wanted you to know that I am aware, I hate this kind of shit, I’m not making any money for or from Substack, and if it continues to suck I will bounce the fuck out of here in a heartbeat. I have no love for these bros they just make the typey typey go into the screen, plenty of other options.

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Links

• In Biden’s upcoming legislative agenda, “no longer merely an environmental imperative like saving the polar bears, or a side element of a stimulus package like it was under the Obama administration, climate change has become the centerpiece.”

• Georgia Republicans just passed a sweeping law to suppress voting and establish partisan control over election results. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are trying to expand and protect voting rights. This country is so polarized!

• "If you say Tuskegee, then you don't have to acknowledge things like pharmacy deserts, things like poverty and unemployment. You can just say, 'That happened then...and there's nothing we can do about it.’”

• A Mauritian climate activist held an underwater protest in a meadow of seagrass in the Indian Ocean.

• 2020 was supposed to be the year when big corporations would get serious about deforestation. Instead deforestation hit a 12-year high because those corporations decided they actually did not give a fuck.

• In what Luke O’Neil called “news from no-shit island,” 50 years of tax cuts for the rich did not increase GDP, but it did increase the wealth of rich people!

• The Department of Health concluded a carcinogen in the water that came from a large manufacturing plant in Wilmington, Mass. likely gave at least 22 children cancer.

• In what appears to be a prank, someone put a “Not Haunted” sign outside of a home for sale near Boston. We know it is not a real sign because every house in New England is 100% haunted.

• You can buy Tom Brady’s Marie Antoinette-ass former condo in Back Bay for $7 million.

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There you have it everyone, I hope this week’s wasn’t too dry I promise next week I will write about some kind of science fiction or comic books. Nobody seems to be clamoring for an all-Jethro Tull issue so I will put that one on the shelf. I hope you all are doing OK out there. Seems like we may be turning a corner here. Spring has sprung we have a couple of cardinals that are using our bird feeder and I named them Cardi A and Cardi B.

But my favorite little chickadees are you all, readers. Keep coming around and I will keep putting out the sunflower seeds, aka newsletters about climate change and TV shows I am watching.

Tate

PS. Do you like this thing? Forward it to someone you love but who needs a good talking to.