Tragedy of the Horizon
Updated 2026-08-01
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
A term popularized by Mark Carney in his speech as Governor of the Bank of England. The argument is that the catastrophic effects of climate change lie beyond the horizon of the actors making decisions today, and because the costs fall on successors while the benefits accrue now, no one in office has a strong incentive to act. It is the tragedy of the commons transposed from space to time: the shared resource is a livable climate, and the users are successive generations who cannot negotiate with each other. Remedies therefore have to discount future risk into present incentives.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Horizon audit: compare the disaster timeline against the tenure of whoever must act. - Risk discounting: price future damage into today's budgets, targets, and credit decisions. - Institutional anchoring: create bodies whose mandate outlives any single electoral cycle and cannot be reversed by the next administration.
Anchor fast decisions
The mechanism is a mismatch of timescales. Decision-makers are rewarded within their own tenure, while the payoff of prevention arrives decades later, so the expected value of acting is systematically discounted. Because the loss is borne by people with no seat at the table and the gain by people who are, markets and politics both drift toward delay. The failure is structural, not a matter of anyone's short-sightedness.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Carneyverified
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