Climate change and the prisoner’s dilemma

Tim Harford on how this problem demonstrates the tension between selfishness and co-operation. Writing in the Financial Times, he analyses the most famous problem in game theory: the prisoner's dilemma - a term initially conceived by mathematicians Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher in the 1950s. Exploring its evolution over the past 70 years, he looks at what the dilemma can teach us about how to handle climate change.