Sharing the greenhouse: Inducing cooperation in a global common

Global warming is an example of a global tragedy of the commons. The atmosphere is a global common property resource. The global nature of this resource makes global warming a particularly difficult problem to solve. The reason for this is that there is no world government that can introduce and enforce the standard solutions for common property resource problems in this case. Any solution will need to be voluntary, in the sense that each country must choose to participate in it. This raises the important issue of just how such voluntary cooperation might be obtained. In this paper, we explore the potential for repeated interaction between countries to induce them to cooperate in combating global warming.