It is almost obligatory to note that it is not possible to attribute an individual event to climate change; but that's not the point. Climate change is making extreme weather events like these more frequent and more extreme. That applies both to the US wildfires (we call similar events bushfires) and to Europe's floods. The same will apply as extreme events - including cyclones, drought, flooding and bushfires - affect Australia with greater frequency in the future.

The amount of additional greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere is already causing damage; if the world continues to add to the gases that contribute to global warming then already severe impacts will become even worse. Although the global COVID-19 pandemic is an immediate priority for most governments, when that is brought under control there will be renewed attention by politicians and international forums on how to address climate change. It is already front of mind for many global leaders, including US President Joe Biden.

There are however four outlier countries whose policies, according to the Guardian, differ: China, Russia, Brazil and Australia. The report suggests that if the rest of the world followed these countries' policies the global temperature would rise by 5 per cent: a catastrophic outcome. That conclusion was based on the non-partisan Paris Equity Check website developed by the University of Melbourne. This country grouping is not a club Australia would normally be comfortable joining. We have more in common with countries like the UK and US whose climate change policies and programs are far more ambitious than ours.

The Australian government clearly accepts that climate change is happening, even if its spending, judging from the last budget, is more directed to adapting than prevention. It could be doing more to curb emissions of greenhouse gases but it has to contend with a strong lobby internally and externally that argues there is no point Australia doing so.

Their main talking point is that Australia contributes only 1.3 per cent of global carbon emissions, so nothing we do will make a significant difference. That argument is wrong. It needs to be put down.

The percentage is roughly right. Calculations of greenhouse gas emissions country by country are fraught with methodological problems - what inventories to use, what to count and what to ignore, calculating net impact when offsets are taken into account, out of date and unreliable data and so on. Percentage contribution calculations differ depending on whether only carbon emissions are counted, or all greenhouse gases. Another complexity is deforestation; when that's taken into account, Brazil and Indonesia become the world's sixth and seventh highest greenhouse gas emitters.

While there is uncertainty around the exact figure, aggregating the various sources does put Australia somewhere about the 1.2 to 1.5 per cent mark, or around fifteenth in the world in terms of total emissions. The biggest is China, at about 28-30 per cent, followed by the United States at about 15 per cent and the European Union at about 10 per cent. There are literally dozens of different sources for greenhouse gas figures, including the US Environmental Protection Agency and the World Resources Institute. They differ slightly but the broad rankings are the same.

Does this mean that countries with lower emissions should not bother? The argument is often raised in the context of what is asserted to be relative inaction by China (although the Chinese government would dispute that). It is a complicated story.

China has pledged to reduce emissions; depending on what measure is chosen it is making progress or slowing. Either way, this does not mean other countries should sit back and do nothing. Of the world's 195 or so countries, more than 180 have greenhouse emissions comparable to or lower than Australia's. As a whole, the aggregate contribution to climate change of small countries is greater than China's. If these countries think China should do more, so should they.

Moreover, the second highest emitter, the US, is engaged in serious efforts to reduce emissions, as is the third, the European Union.

Greenhouse gases are a problem of common resources, and need a solution based on collective action.

There is a long history of analysis of collective action problems in economics. They are common. Examples include: taxation - why bother to pay tax, your tax payment is not going to make much difference to the country, it is only a tiny percentage of the total; voting - your vote makes hardly any difference to the result, so why bother; vaccination - if you get vaccinated it will make only a small difference to the total percentage of the population who are: yet that collective number of small impacts means the difference between a vulnerable or a relatively safe population.

People naturally understand and appreciate the logic of collective action. Although some collective action problems (like taxes) require government legislation, others emerge spontaneously.

A community will mobilise hundreds of people to look for a lost child even though each one individually makes only a small percentage contribution to finding that child.

One of our major insurers runs an advertisement showing commuters lifting a train off a person trapped underneath (based on a real incident at Stirling railway station in Perth). They all contributed. It would have been easy for smaller commuters to stand back and say "there's a couple of big, strong blokes over there whose efforts will make more of a difference than mine" (you can call them China and the US). The people on that platform all pitched in to help. The same applies with climate change.

In a 1965 book The Logic of Collective Action economist Mancur Olson argued that rational people would not contribute to solving collective action problems without incentives or coercion. That has been comprehensively rebutted by economists since; especially, the work of Elinor Ostrom, who showed how communities themselves can and do develop solutions to collective action problems in natural resources. She looked at climate change, arguing for multiple actions at different levels (what she called polycentric systems).

This is already happening in Australia. Despite relative inaction by governments, households have the world's highest uptake of rooftop solar power; financial institutions are increasingly demanding commitment to action on climate change before investing in a company; corporations themselves are adopting renewables and reducing emissions.

One of the key factors is social norms. When a community decides that collective action is desirable and a norm develops around it, there is a great deal of pressure on every member of that community to cooperate.

Does that apply internationally? Absolutely it does. Global norms about how countries should behave influence what governments do. They become institutions. In many cases international treaties and agreements emerge long after the institution. For example, norms on how to treat diplomats were in place well before they were formalised in the 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

If Australia is concerned that the rest of the world should take action on climate change, the most effective way to ensure that happens is ourselves to take action - helping establish a global norm. Inaction only encourages inaction by other countries.

There are other arguments as to why the 1.3 per cent argument is misleading, including that Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions rates in the world, and that coal exports mean our actual contribution to climate change is far higher. They are valid, but we don't need them. The nature of climate change as a collective action problem provides a full and sufficient reason to reject the 1.3 per cent argument. For collective action problems to be solved, everyone has to contribute, small as well as large.

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