Hi Phalox. Thanks for the comment. You may be interested in my post “Insecticide-treated nets [ITNs] significantly harm mosquitoes, but one can easily offset this?”, where I compared the effects of ITNs on humans and mosquitoes.
Relatedly, saving human lives also affects soil invertebrates due to resulting in more agricultural land to feed the people who are saved, and I think the effects on soil invertebrates may be much larger or smaller than the benefits to humans. I calculate that GiveWell’s top charities change the living time of soil invertebrates by 539 M animal-years per $, and that of soil arthropods by 10.8 M animal-years per $. As illustrated in the graph below, I estimate such charities may change the welfare of soil invertebrates much more or less than they they benefit humans. The title of graph says “Increase in the welfare”, not “Change in the welfare”, because I assumed expanding agricultural land increases the welfare of soil invertebrates, but I am very uncertain about this. The estimates below suppose welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year is proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent”. An exponent between 0 and 2 covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable.
Hi Phalox. Thanks for the comment. You may be interested in my post “Insecticide-treated nets [ITNs] significantly harm mosquitoes, but one can easily offset this?”, where I compared the effects of ITNs on humans and mosquitoes.
Relatedly, saving human lives also affects soil invertebrates due to resulting in more agricultural land to feed the people who are saved, and I think the effects on soil invertebrates may be much larger or smaller than the benefits to humans. I calculate that GiveWell’s top charities change the living time of soil invertebrates by 539 M animal-years per $, and that of soil arthropods by 10.8 M animal-years per $. As illustrated in the graph below, I estimate such charities may change the welfare of soil invertebrates much more or less than they they benefit humans. The title of graph says “Increase in the welfare”, not “Change in the welfare”, because I assumed expanding agricultural land increases the welfare of soil invertebrates, but I am very uncertain about this. The estimates below suppose welfare per fully-healthy-animal-year is proportional to “individual number of neurons”^”exponent”. An exponent between 0 and 2 covers the best guesses that I consider reasonable.