Size doesn’t matter – Climate and The Fisherman’s dilemma
Last week I wrote about the Fisherman’s dilemma. How acting in self-interest is self-defeating.
Let’s apply it to something real, large, and present — climate change policy. Specifically, one of the popular arguments against making change: “We’re too small to make a difference.”
The argument you’ll have heard goes something like this: “Australia contributes only 1.3% of global emissions. Why should we damage our economy and living standards striving for net zero when China, India and the United States aren’t pulling their weight? Our restraint is meaningless without theirs.”
It feels reasonable. It is, in its own terms, rational. It is the fisherman’s dilemma wearing a flag. This is the fisherman saying “yeah, but my catch is very small.”
Let’s slow down and look at what the argument is built on, because once you see the mechanism, you’ll recognise it everywhere.
The proportion claim: “We’re too small to matter.”
True, as stated. Australia’s 1.3% is a small slice. But here’s the problem: every nation on earth can make this claim with equal mathematical validity.
The European Union contributes around 7.5% — significant, but insufficient alone. The United States, roughly 14% — same problem. Even China, the world’s largest emitter at around 29%, could point to the remaining 71% and argue that their restraint alone won’t save the lake.
An argument that every actor can make simultaneously, with equal legitimacy, is not an argument. It’s a permission structure for universal inaction. A logic that justifies everyone’s restraint from acting guarantees that no one acts.
The conditionality claim: “We’ll act when others do.”
This one sounds almost cooperative — burden-sharing, mutual commitment, fair play. But as a prior condition required for action, it suffers the same universality problem.
If Australia waits for China. China waits for the US. The US waits for India. India waits for Australia. The waiting is the outcome. The conditionality doesn’t enable coordination — it prevents it. Every nation is simultaneously the reason no other nation moves.
Here is where Kant earns his keep.
Immanuel Kant gave us a test called the categorical imperative. In plain terms: before acting on a principle, ask whether you could honestly will for everyone to act on the same principle.
If the “we’re too small, others aren’t acting” argument applies to Australia as a reason for not acting, you must honestly acknowledge that every other nation is equally entitled to apply the same principle.
Universalise the maxim and what do you get? A world where no one acts. Which is, of course, precisely the world the argument claims to be responding to.
The argument doesn’t just fail morally — it fails its own logical test. It produces, when applied to everyone, the exact outcome it uses as its justification for inaction. Philosophers call this a performative contradiction.
Out of the philosophy and back to the real world — the argument produces one of two outcomes for Australia.
Either enough nations make the same calculation and no one acts — in which case the argument has delivered precisely the world it was reacting to. Or enough nations take proactive steps without us — in which case Australia benefits from their action without bearing any of the cost or doing any of the work. We become, in the economic and global contribution sense, a free rider.
There is no third path where Australian inaction is both principled and consequentially neutral. Pick your outcome: we either helped guarantee collective failure, or we let others do the hard work on our behalf. Neither is a flattering place to land.
There are real trade-offs in climate policy. There are genuine questions about pace, burden, and economic impact. That particular how, where, and when is for smarter people than me to establish.
But the arguments that “we shouldn’t act because others aren’t” or that “we needn’t act because we’re such a small contributor” are not good reasons for inaction. They are, in fact, the fisherman deciding to increase his yield — rational in isolation, self-defeating in aggregate.
Let’s remove from the table the arguments from smallness and conditionality. Not because they’re politically inconvenient, but because they are not good reasons for whatever strategic option we take.