Indiana University 8
R &C A : You have a strong belief in ability of the average person to figure things out, but the political and economic questions of our day seem hopelessly complex. How is it possible for an average person to figure out or understand enough to take on such tough issues? O s t r om : I don’t expect that the average person is going to be able to figure out how to get global leaders to agree on an issue such as climate change. But let’s take the example of the ‘refrigerator problem’ in an office where a refrigerator must be shared. Here at the Workshop, we have a kitchen, and we have had refrigerator problems. There’s a sign in our kitchen now that says, ‘Help us with our commons.’ We ask everyone to pitch in. We talk about it from time to time in staff meetings. We have a number of little routine ways that we all share, and it works pretty well. Now, apply that to a neighborhood. If you’ve got a problem of, say, a neighborhood park not being well taken care of, and you have a way of meeting in the neighborhood face-to-face, people can figure things out. You might say, ‘OK, let’s go to the City Hall and discuss this. If they’ll help us out, then we’ll create a pickup crew. If we split it, and each of us does a pickup once a week or so, then we can make it work.’ We should not just ask the city to do everything. There are things they can do, and things we can do. For those problems that we can see and interact with, I’m arguing that public policy has frequently taken away the presumption of respect. Then, broaden it out to watching what farmers do with irrigation systems. Sometimes they’ve got really difficult problems. I’ve seen farmers who have dug through a hill. That’s a pretty substantial engineering task, and the farmers have done it themselves. When we get to the global level, what I argue is, if we wait around for global leaders and that’s all we do, we’re sunk. I’m currently trying to write several things about that. There’s a lot we can do. For example, here at the Workshop, we’re looking at different ways we can reduce overuse of our heating system. There is a sense that what we do as individuals has one big cost to the globe. But my argument is, there are externalities (or, consequences) at multiple scales. If you bike to work, you are healthier. You’re not making a huge difference to the atmosphere, but you may be making a huge difference in your health. We need to be thinking about the positive externalities. ‘Think globally, act locally’ is not just a slogan. We can, and we must! Because up at the global level, they’re not doing anything! Look at all that time spent [at the U.N. Climate Change Convention] in Copenhagen, and they still didn’t agree. I was disappointed. I think everyone was. I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. I had hope.
What other things can we do to have an impact on climate change? What difference do our small-scale actions really make? I don’t want to say to others, ‘You should do it,’ when I’m not
willing to do anything. You get benefits from things like composting, because you can have a better garden. Find a neighbor and figure out how to expand things, get the whole neighborhood to recycle. Then maybe you can get the city to do a little bit more, and instead of putting things in the dump, help the city by recycling. The important question is, How do we get these positive externalities recognized and taken into account? What should have happened at Copenhagen? What is the role of large-scale governance in this case? For any approach taken to the global climate, there will be arguments. I don’t know if the best thing is a cap, but it might be. The problem is, if you cap, then those who’ve been big emitters can continue being big emitters for a while, and that isn’t fair to some who haven’t done anything. Getting efficiency, fairness, enforceability—all those things—into one agreement is very, very hard. This is one of the toughest problems we’ve ever faced. I’m very anxious, however, about just sitting around. Let’s go back to the average citizen. What about competition and self-interest? How does cooperation around common resources win out over ‘not in my backyard’? It doesn’t, automatically. It takes people recognizing, ‘OK, folks, we really do have a joint problem. We can just let a mess be a mess, but it’s unhealthy for all of us.’ It takes communication. That’s where our experiments [at the Workshop] have given us a strong foundation. If we have an experiment that involves a common-pool resource or public good but there is no communication, then people do not cooperate. There must be some way of people communicating. Face-to-face is better than electronic, but sometimes chat rooms work. There has to be some recognition of ‘we’re in this together.’ This is now sustained by a large number of experiments. Developing a sense of togetherness, norms, responsibilities — humans can do that. Humans can also be very selfish, and in a competitive market where the good is absolutely private, cooperation means creating a cartel. And that’s not good. You used the word ‘trust’ repeatedly in your Nobel Memorial Prize lecture. Are you hopeful about the persistence of trust in our world? Yes! Yes. In small to medium-size groups, it’s really important. In the lab, the face-to-face communication builds trust, agreements, coordination. Without it, you don’t go anywhere. How much trust is sufficient? It depends on the scale. If you’re asking me for a dime because other people are putting in a dime, that does not take a lot of trust. But if you ask me to put in half my annual income? It’s a question of scale. You ended your Nobel Memorial Prize presentation with