The Long Way Back to Ourselves

9.3

The First Planetary Collective-Goods Problem

This episode starts from the sober opening sentence of the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and traces how the carbon dioxide measurements Charles David Keeling began in 1958 document the physics of climate change. It introduces the commons trap and uses Garrett Hardin's 1968 formula of the tragedy of the commons to show why a problem with uncontested physics stays so hard to solve politically. The ozone agreement of the 1980s tests under what narrow conditions Elinor Ostrom's case for self-governance holds at planetary scale. The episode also corrects the popular reading of Rapa Nui as proof that a closed society destroys itself.