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Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

by AnnelieseHXW Posted on September 24, 2015

Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

By on 24 Sep 2015commentsShare

Over the past few months, upwards of 50 countries have made their views on fighting climate change exceedingly clear. In submitting pledges to the United Nations in the run-up to the Paris negotiations, cabinets and diplomats the world over have spelled out exactly what their governments are prepared to commit to the global climate dilemma. Now, a team of economists from Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and Scotland thinks it can leverage these positions to predict the outcome of the Paris talks in the same way football analysts might use players’ stats to predict the winner of the Super Bowl. (After all, COP21 will basically be C-SPAN’s Super Bowl.)

Viewing most national interests as frighteningly cemented, these self-dubbed “predictioneers” are employing a branch of economics called game theory to call the outcomes. Game theory is the math behind rational decision-making. In practice, what the economists’ work takes is figuring out how to convert negotiating blocs’ positions into streams of usable numbers. Climate Home has the scoop:

One method anticipates the bargaining positions of all main actors and blocs, from the United States, European Union to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

How salient is the issue of loss and damage – or climate compensation – for cyclone-menaced AOSIS, for example? How flexible can it be on the issue’s inclusion in a final pact? And what clout can it exert over other countries?

Those variables, deduced by researchers’ scanning of official UN submissions as well as conversations with negotiators, award a value for each “actor”.

Running actors’ values through game theoretic models produces a series of predictions for what observers can expect from the negotiations.

Sound a little too Nate Silver to be true? It might be. Things like political momentum and the reality of fatigued, hungover diplomats are tricky, if not impossible, to capture in game theory.

But in fact, researchers on the team have predicted U.N. climate talk outcomes before — with impressive accuracy. In 2009, before the notably boondoggled Copenhagen negotiations, two of the team’s economists independently predicted the unfortunate Copenhagen outcome (which failed to guarantee any legally binding international climate action). Here’s more from Climate Home:

Frans Stokman at the University of Groningen, predicted a weak, voluntary agreement which slightly deepened pledges made for the Kyoto Protocol, and pledged a limited adaptation fund.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a self-styled “predictioneer” favouring science over punditry, too predicted the Danish summit would be a “bust”.

“Sacrificing self-interest for the greater good just doesn’t happen very often. Governments don’t throw themselves on hand grenades,” he wrote in a Foreign Policy article in October 2009.

Success in Paris won’t take governments throwing themselves on hand grenades, but it will take an immense amount of compromise — especially on behalf of developed countries. How optimistic should we be about these compromises? The economists are expected to reveal their predictions shortly before the negotiations begin in late November.

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‘Predictioneers’ forecast Paris climate talks outcome with game theory

, Climate Home.

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Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

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America Once Accepted 800,000 War Refugees. Is it Time to Do That Again?

by DebLangton Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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With the refugee crisis in Europe worsening dramatically, the Obama administration announced on Thursday that it would accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. That’s a significant step: Over the past four years, as millions of Syrians have been displaced by a brutal civil war, the United States has admitted only about 1,500 Syrian refugees. But humanitarian advocates say President Barack Obama’s move doesn’t go nearly far enough.

The US offer “is cold comfort to the victims of the Syrian conflict,” said International Rescue Committee president David Miliband in a press release Friday. “With 4 million living in limbo and tens of thousands making desperate choices to reach safety, the US has a moral responsibility to lead and is fully equipped to respond in a far more robust way.” Part of the solution, experts argue, is for the United States to help organize a program to send refugees to developed countries around the world. After all, they point out, we’ve done it before.

“This is not science fiction,” said Francois Crepeau, the United Nations’s special rapporteur for the human rights of migrants. “We resettled almost 2 million Indochinese 40 years ago. We can do it again.”

After the end of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of people attempted to flee Southeast Asia, mostly from Vietnam, by riding rickety, overloaded boats to nearby countries. Those countries, like many European countries during the current crisis, felt overwhelmed by the unyielding and disorganized flow of people arriving on their shores. They eventually announced that they would refuse to take in any more “boat people,” prompting the international community to create a global resettlement program with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR ultimately resettled 1.3 million Southeast Asians in countries around the world, including more than 800,000 in the United States.

Vietnamese refugees watch as a Thai Marine police boat casts them adrift in the Gulf of Siam after being turned away on November 30, 1977. They had escaped earlier in November from Vietnam to what they thought would be freedom, but Thai police refused to allow them to come ashore. Eddie Adams/AP

Tugboats load water onto the refugee ship Tung An at its anchorage in Manila Bay on December 28, 1978. The Philippines had declared that the more than 2,300 Vietnamese “boat people” aboard could not go ashore. The United States eventually accepted some of the ship’s refugees. AH/AP

View image | gettyimages.com

Two million is now about the number that Crepeau thinks should be resettled today across the “global north”—essentially the European Union, plus the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. “Two million refugees resettled over five years means 400,000 per year,” he said. “Four hundred thousand per year divided by 32 countries representing 850 million inhabitants is not much.”

That’s still a small fraction of the nearly 12 million people exiled or internally displaced by the war in Syria, not to mention the significant number of people fleeing violence in Afghanistan and Iraq or repression in Eritrea and other countries. “It’s going to be a small percentage. I don’t see any way it’s not going to be that,” acknowledged Larry Yungk, a senior resettlement officer with the UNHCR. “That being said, we have always said that we need more resettlement places, whether it’s for Syrians or globally. And the Syrian conflict, I think, has shown why we need more places.”

Finding those places has been particularly difficult in Europe. Yungk praised the “very generous response” of Germany, which expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year, but several other EU countries are openly hostile to accepting refugees. The government of Denmark ran newspaper ads in Lebanon telling Syrian refugees they’re not welcome in the Scandinavian country. Hungary has subjected migrants to humiliating treatment, even as it builds a border fence to stop the influx. Such countries helped block a mandatory refugee quota system for EU members in May, and Germany’s efforts to try again are meeting with little success.

A Syrian man swims in front of a dinghy full of refugees that suffered engine failure as they approached Lesbos island, Greece, on September 11, 2015.

Yungk, who spoke with Mother Jones prior to the administration’s announcement on Thursday, isn’t optimistic that the United States will ultimately admit a dramatically higher number of people for resettlement. Not only is the United States far from the Middle East, where the bulk of the refugees are, but its system for investigating and approving refugees is already heavily taxed. The United States takes in about 70,000 refugees from across the world every year. But the 1,500 Syrians granted refugee status so far are just a small fraction of the 18,000 or so Syrian cases that the UNHCR has submitted to the US government.

“Our goal is to try to work with the United States to reduce that gap,” Yungk said. “If we do, then the ability is there to talk, I think, about more referrals. And the United States will be probably more willing to look at it.” The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

But even if the United States doesn’t accept a large number of refugees—the 10,000 that will now be allowed into the United States is about half the number of refugees who arrived in Munich from Hungary last weekend—merely taking action could help convince other nations to pitch in. “Yes, it would be nice to resettle some more refugees today,” said James Hathaway, the director of the Program in Refugee and Asylum Law at the University of Michigan. “But the important thing that they should be doing is leading—not a new refugee convention, but a new mechanism to share the responsibilities of protection around the world. The US needs to show leadership on that.”

Pressure is growing on the United States to do more. In May, a group of 14 Senate Democrats wrote a letter urging the Obama administration to accept up 65,000 Syrians. A coalition of American groups including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and the International Rescue Committee is now calling for the United States to take in up to 100,000 Syrians. Even GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has come out in support of expanded resettlement in the United States. But even if the magnitude of the refugee crisis has prompted some change, large-scale progress will be much harder.

“If you do go back to some of the big situations like Bosnia and Southeast Asia, what you did see is, frankly, a coalition of countries all coming together to say, ‘We’ll do this,'” Yungk said. “So that’s what it would take.”

Max J. Rosenthal is reporting from Berlin as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, a two-month reporting program in Germany run by the International Center for Journalists. Gabrielle Canon contributed reporting to this article from San Francisco.

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America Once Accepted 800,000 War Refugees. Is it Time to Do That Again?

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The IMF Throws a Monkey Wrench Into the Greek Soap Opera

by RacheleBruche Posted on July 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Greek drama continues. Just as it appears that Greece has capitulated to every demand short of selling off the Parthenon, one-third of the Troika1 is having second thoughts:

The International Monetary Fund threatened to withdraw support for Greece’s bailout on Tuesday unless European leaders agree to substantial debt relief, an immediate challenge to the region’s plan to rescue the country.

The aggressive stance sets up a standoff with Germany and other eurozone creditors, which have been reluctant to provide additional debt relief.

Reluctant? Yeah, I guess you could put it that way. But it would be a mite more accurate to say that it will be a cold day in hell before Angela Merkel agrees to any debt relief for Greece.

In any case, there’s a weird kabuki-like character to this whole thing. Everybody agrees that Greece will never pay back all the debt it owes. Just not gonna happen. So why don’t Greece’s creditors bite the bullet and face reality? It’s not because the Germans and others are stupid and don’t realize they’re never getting all their money back. It’s because….

Well, it’s not entirely clear why. Officially, Germany says that under EU treaties it’s illegal to forgive debt. I’m not sure anyone really believes that, though. Unofficially, no one wants to write down the debt because it’s the thing that keeps Greece under the EU lash. The only reason Europe can demand draconian austerity measures from Greece is because they can threaten to withhold the loans Greece needs to keep servicing its massive debt. This would throw Greece into default and economic chaos—which is precisely the threat that forced Greece to accept the European terms for a new bailout a few days ago.

Still, why not write down a big chunk of the debt? There would still be enough left to keep Greece under control. This is where things get even fuzzier. One answer is that it sets an uncomfortable precedent. If Greece gets a big debt writedown, why shouldn’t Portugal and Spain and Italy? Another answer is that the size of the Greek debt really does matter, if only cosmetically. Europe wants Greece to cut its spending and run a balanced budget. The bigger Greece’s debt service, the more it has to cut spending to achieve balance.

Does any of this make sense? Sure, from a certain point of view—namely that of a European public that’s fed up with Greece and doesn’t want its leaders using their tax dollars to pull Greece’s fat out of the fire. But the IMF doesn’t have to worry about European public opinion. It wants to face reality and just admit what everyone already knows. And here’s the reality. First, even with a big writedown, Greece will still be safely under the Troika’s thumb. Second, from an economist’s perspective all that matters about Greece’s finances is that it achieves primary budget balance—that is, balance not counting debt payments. So the IMF doesn’t care about squeezing the Greek budget beyond all reason based on an artificial debt number.

In any case, the IMF has supported debt relief for some time, but has only now decided to go public as a way of exerting pressure on Europe. Will it work? No telling. As always, stay tuned. The soap opera never ends.

1For those of you who haven’t been following this stuff religiously, the Troika consists of the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. These are the three entities that Greece owes money to.

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The IMF Throws a Monkey Wrench Into the Greek Soap Opera

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Iran Nuclear Deal Reached Betweeen World Powers

by Kyung Wilhoite Posted on July 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Following years of negotiations, Iran and six other world powers have finally reached a historic agreement set to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In return, longstanding international sanctions will be lifted.

The accord, perhaps the most significant diplomatic victory of Obama’s presidency, was struck between Iran, the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia, after a grueling 18-day negotiation in Vienna, Austria. It includes an agreement to allow Iran to continue its nuclear program, but reduce its current stockpile of low enriched uranium by 98 percent and its centrifuges at its main enrichment facility by two-thirds, for at least a ten-year period.

Under the agreement, United Nations inspectors will also be allowed into the country, but their entry is not guaranteed. If denied, the world powers would convene to assess the situation.

Hours after the announcement early Tuesday morning, President Obama praised the landmark agreement and indicated he would veto any legislation attempting to halt it, in a televised address from the White House.

“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region.”

“I will veto any legislation that prevents the successful implementation of this deal,” Obama said.

Congress now has 60 days to review the deal.

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Iran Nuclear Deal Reached Betweeen World Powers

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Here’s Why Greece Is Having Such a Hard Time Getting European Agreement to Europe’s Own Proposal

by AthenaTurriff8 Posted on July 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Greek austerity proposal has been approved by parliament, and since it’s essentially identical to the European demands of two weeks ago, everything should now be hunky dory, right? The Europeans will accept the Greek capitulation and move on.

Um, no. Emergency talks in Brussels are being held around the clock this weekend, and there are still a couple of big sticking points.

First: The new proposal is much bigger than the previous one. Back in June, Greece was asking for about €7 billion in loans that would cover its needs for a few months. Now it’s asking for €53 billion over three years, and European experts think even that number is too optimistic. Greece will really need about €74 billion—plus additional funds to recapitalize Greek banks, which have basically disbursed all their cash over the past couple of weeks. This raises several concerns:

The European proposal in June was meant to set conditions for releasing the final €7 billion in loans in Greece’s second round of bailouts. But the new Greek proposal essentially wants to use these same conditions as the basis for a third round of bailouts that would be bigger and longer-lasting. European finance ministers are skeptical, with many suggesting that the June proposal was never meant to cover a whole new round of bailouts. Something tougher is now required.
The fact that Greece estimates its needs at €53 billion and European technocrats estimate it at €74 suggests to many Europeans that Greece still can’t get its finances straight. This does little to boost confidence in the Syriza government.

Second: No one trusts Greece even slightly. The Europeans have never trusted the Greeks to implement the deals they agree to, and they still don’t. “What guarantees can Greece give they are actually going to implement what they propose?” Austrian finance minister Hans Jorg Schelling asked bluntly, echoing similar questions from the Dutch finance minister and others. Even Greek allies like France need to be convinced of Greek goodwill. “Confidence has been ruined by every Greek government over many years which have sometimes made promises without making good on them at all,” said French finance minister Michel Sapin.

After the events of the past two weeks, the issue of trust is even worse. Dutch state secretary Eric Wiebes notes that the commitment of the Greek government is a key concern. “That has been the weak point because, after all, we are discussing a proposal from the Greek government that was fiercely rejected a week ago.” And to make things worse, although the Greek parliament approved the latest proposal, it caused a serious schism in the Syriza party, with many members voting against it. “The parliamentary majority of the government now in Athens is being eroded,” Irish finance minister Michael Noonan said, “and they may not have the capacity to implement the measures they have agreed as time goes by.”

Things have now degraded to such a dire point that German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble has even floated the idea of a “temporary” five-year Greek exit from the euro. This is so batty that almost everyone else at today’s talks—including some of Greece’s strongest skeptics—thinks it’s both ridiculous and probably illegal too. But even though it’s not likely to be taken seriously, it does indicate just how frosty the Germans are toward any new bailout deal with Greece. It also gives ammunition to Greek critics who have maintained for weeks that Germany’s real goal is to kick Greece out of the euro.

So there you have it. The June proposal from the Europeans may have been OK two weeks ago, but it’s now past its sell-by date. Getting European buy-in to a new, third bailout for Greece continues to be a very delicate and knotty problem. Stay tuned.

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Here’s Why Greece Is Having Such a Hard Time Getting European Agreement to Europe’s Own Proposal

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The Rest of the World Is Pretty Happy With President Obama’s Handling of World Affairs

by VernellClouse Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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President Obama has had his ups and downs on the world stage. Libya didn’t turn out so well. There’s been no progress between Israel and the Palestinians. Vladimir Putin continues to be annoying. Still, all things considered, he hasn’t done badly. He’s started some new wars, but none as horrifically bad for US interests as George Bush’s. He appears to have managed passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He negotiated the NEW START treaty with Russia. He’s mostly stayed out of Syria, despite endless braying from Republicans. The pivot to Asia has been moderately successful. And he might yet sign a treaty that will halt Iran’s nuclear bomb program, though it still looks like no more than a 50-50 proposition to me.

But enough about me. What does the rest of the world think of Obama? According to a new Pew poll, they think surprisingly well of him. Obama’s foreign policy is astonishingly well regarded in France, Italy, and Germany—and surprisingly, although his numbers are down from last year, he still does reasonably well in Israel too. And here I thought Obama was universally hated in Israel because he had betrayed them to their enemies thanks to his preoccupation with sucking up to Muslims. I guess that’ll teach me to listen to Republicans.

Obama bombs in a few countries too, notably Russia, Jordan, and Pakistan. Russia and Pakistan are easy to understand, but what’s the deal with Jordan? I don’t quite remember what we’ve done to piss them off.

China is surprisingly positive: 44-41 percent approval. The rest of Asia is strongly positive, probably because they trust Obama to stand up to China.

Anyway, Obama’s median approval throughout the world is a surprisingly healthy 65-27 percent. He could only wish for such strong approval at home.

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The Rest of the World Is Pretty Happy With President Obama’s Handling of World Affairs

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If Hillary Clinton Testifies About Her Emails, She Should Do It In Public

by CharaGentry Posted on March 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest on Hillary Clinton’s emails:

The chairman of the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks asked Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday to appear for a private interview about her exclusive use of a personal email account when she was secretary of state.

….Mr. Gowdy said the committee believed that “a transcribed interview would best protect Secretary Clinton’s privacy, the security of the information queried, and the public’s interest in ensuring this committee has all information needed to accomplish the task set before it.”

Go ahead and call me paranoid, but this sure seems like the perfect setup to allow Gowdy—or someone on his staff—to leak just a few bits and pieces of Clinton’s testimony that put her in the worst possible light. Darrell Issa did this so commonly that it was practically part of the rules of the game when he was investigating Benghazi and other Republican obsessions.

Who knows? Maybe Gowdy is a more honest guy. But since Clinton herself has offered to testify publicly, why would anyone not take her up on it? It’s not as if any of this risks exposing classified information or anything.

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If Hillary Clinton Testifies About Her Emails, She Should Do It In Public

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Peculiar Eyesight Question

by MarcoBownqkoxw Posted on March 28, 2015

Mother Jones

I’ll be asking my optometrist about this shortly, but just for fun I thought I’d throw it out to the hive mind to see if anyone knows what’s going on.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that my distance vision is a little fuzzy. Time for new glasses, you say, and you’re probably right. But here’s the odd thing. I keep all my old glasses, and last night I tried them all on just to see if an older prescription worked better than my current glasses. What I discovered was a little strange.

Right under my TV I happen to have two LED clocks. One uses red LEDs and the other uses blue LEDs. With my current glasses, the blue LEDs are sharp and the red LEDs are fuzzy. But when I put on glasses that are a few years old, it changes. The red LEDs are sharp and the blue LEDs are fuzzy. The difference is quite noticeable, not a subtle thing at all.

Anyone know what this is all about?

Continued:

Peculiar Eyesight Question

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Has Israel Given Up On Democrats?

by DamianAmes Posted on March 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Israel is doing its best to spy on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West. No surprise there. But the Obama administration believes they’ve taken things too far:

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said….The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.

….“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”

The upshot of all this is that support for Israel is rapidly becoming a partisan issue. “If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.” This is not likely to be good for Israel in the long term.

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Has Israel Given Up On Democrats?

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Television Is a Vast Disease-Laden Wasteland

by RobtEleanor Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jason Millman writes:

Maybe you’ve noticed that prescription drug ads are everywhere these days — more so than usual. You wouldn’t be wrong.

Oh yes, I’ve noticed. It’s one reason I watch less TV than I might otherwise—especially shows that are pitched to, um, mature demographics. I feel like I’m simply bombarded with ads about terrible diseases and all the terrible side effects that the advertised drugs might cause. Maybe I’m just having a harder time tuning out this stuff than usual, but I find it immensely depressing to be surrounded by reminders of disease every time I turn on the TV. Anyone else feel the same way?

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Television Is a Vast Disease-Laden Wasteland

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