OPEC has long been Saudi Arabia reducing output, and everyone else selling everything they can. They haven't had much power since the 1970s, but that they exist means they are a threat that if everyone else actually stuck to the agreement for a change. This is the common problem for cartels: everyone has inventive to cheat on the deals made. By selling a little more than your share you get more money, while because e…
Tangent but: this is also why reducing greenhouse gas emissions is hard. As long as fossil fuels remain one of the cheapest easiest to scale ways to make power, there’s a similar incentive to cheat. If everyone else cuts emissions and you don’t, your margins are higher and you can undercut them. Global reductions require an all-cooperate scenario. Developing nations have the strongest incentive to cheat since they ne…
This isn't really how it works, since greenhouse gas output is pretty much corellated to income level, and even that's an understatement, since people in rich countries buy stuff made in poor countries, and manufacturing causes emissions.
The real problem is carbon credits - rich countries can both pollute, and absolve themselves of moral responsibility by buying carbon credits - and said carbon credits are fungible, so countries' compete for the lowest selling price.
So what ends up happening is poor countries sell carbon credits by offering programs and promises, but can't/won't bear the cost, as that would mean they'd have to raise credit prices, and buyers would go elsewhere.
It's a system designed to encourage cheating while absolving moral responsibility.