No worries about the delay, now it’s my term to apologise as it’s been a while on my side too! I am finding this quite fascinating and informative so I really appreciate you taking the time to write such detailed and thorough comments. I also wanted to thank you for your work at FP as everything I’ve read from FP regarding climate has been extremely rigorous and interesting.
1. Differences between TSM and XR: These points make sense so thank you for the explanation. It seems like the main concern you have about TSM is their partisanship and allegiance with the Democratic Party so I definitely understand how that’s both quite different to XR and also a potential problem. Interestingly enough, I previously thought that was a positive that TSM had over XR as XR being apolitical in that it doesn’t endorse specific parties or political candidates, often gets touted as an organisation that raises the alarm about the problem of the climate crisis, yet doesn’t provide tangible steps forward through policy or politics (with the exception that there was a CEE Bill introduced to UK Parliament recently which actually does those things). I would also say it can enable greater mobilisation to a degree as people are much more used to turning out for electoral politics where local groups within XR may not have as tangible organising points locally.
2. We regularly fund high-risk high-reward bets with the FP Climate Fund.
That’s really interesting and I didn’t know about this. I’ve now found a page on your website explaining the funding for TerraPraxis (I missed it initially as it was referred to as Terra Praxis and not Energy for Humanity). Interestingly enough, a friend/colleague of mine from XR is now working for them, small world. You mentioned elsewhere that you often have 20 or so pages of research for each charity recommendation and I was wondering if these were accessible at all as I would be interested in reading more about the reasons behind funding for TerraPraxis and Carbon180 beyond the summaries on the website, specifically if you had any quantification of EV/ the possible impact of these two groups on carbon emissions? And are there other examples of hits-based giving from previous years you can point me towards that FP Climate Fund has funded as I can seemingly only find the usual suspects of CfRN and CATF on your climate page!
3. Progressive movements impact
The rise of progressive climate movements recently is only one example of where I was drawing the general high expected value of social movements. The other being historical research from Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth which found that any nonviolent social movement that garnered over 3.5% of the population in active support, never failed to achieve their aims. There were some limitations to this study in terms of audience (primarily Global South countries) however I believe it is worth noting nonetheless. Then of course there is a slight element of anecdotal evidence from history i.e. Civil Rights Movement, Indian Independence, Serbian revolution and so on.
I would agree about the unintended risks and uncertainties around movements, especially decentralised ones such as TSM and XR where it is more likely you’ll have individuals or groups that could go AWOL to put it bluntly and come out against certain important solutions i.e. CCS or nuclear like you said. To a degree I think this could be mitigated by the approach taken by the movement in terms of levels of decentralisation and central opinions on certain policies (or having none, such as XR)
4. Neglectedness and quantifying expected values
I definitely agree about the marginal returns to funds and it was implied but not obvious in my comment that in my opinion, XR could achieve a lot more given an increase in funds and that its main bottleneck to success currently was financial. The second point about the impact of XR on emissions is much more tricky to calculate and one I wanted to ask you about.
How would you even go about doing an EV calculation for a group such as TSM or XR where the causal link from the work they do to change in emissions seems so distant and vague? For example, if I had to try break down very crudely, it would be something like:
Direct action → Media coverage → change in attitude of public/policy maker → growing public support for climate → pressure on policymakers for more green legislation → green legislation passes → climate emissions affected.
Obviously this is very basic but not only are the uncertainties for the second and third links (most of them actually) quite large in my opinion, this whole chain could have a time lag of 5-10 years with subconscious effects on people so how can we quantify things like that in our EVs appropriately? Not to mention that there would be 100s of other factors that can lead to a change in attitudes of the public or policy makers so how do we determine how much of that was a movement vs other factors?
5. Incremental vs. transformational.
Apologies for the bad example of the Paris Agreement, yes it’s not legislation but hopefully it made the point well enough. I can see presidents wouldn’t scrap certain policies that are favourable to both parties (such as innovation budgets or tax credits for businesses that Republicans are likely to support) however surely this would break down for some climate legislation. Another example I’m plucking out of thin air would be a policy to divert subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable sources. I’m fairly certain that there is a swath of examples that would fit the bill in terms that most Republicans would oppose but Democrats would support and are good for the environment, such as the above one. Surely then all of these policies would be up for reversal if leadership of a country changed, whereas if 70-80% of the population, including Republicans, supported climate change legislation sufficiently (via a successful social movement) then even Republican representatives would not want to endorse reversals.
It seems like we’re slightly talking about different things though as what you say is true for groups such as CATF who (probably) only support robust policies that are favourable by both sides. However where I think the difference would like is other green policies as the one I mentioned above that could be essential in reducing emissions but are more divisive politically currently, where a social movement could (but could also not) work to increase general public support for climate legislation.
No worries about the delay, now it’s my term to apologise as it’s been a while on my side too! I am finding this quite fascinating and informative so I really appreciate you taking the time to write such detailed and thorough comments. I also wanted to thank you for your work at FP as everything I’ve read from FP regarding climate has been extremely rigorous and interesting.
1. Differences between TSM and XR: These points make sense so thank you for the explanation. It seems like the main concern you have about TSM is their partisanship and allegiance with the Democratic Party so I definitely understand how that’s both quite different to XR and also a potential problem. Interestingly enough, I previously thought that was a positive that TSM had over XR as XR being apolitical in that it doesn’t endorse specific parties or political candidates, often gets touted as an organisation that raises the alarm about the problem of the climate crisis, yet doesn’t provide tangible steps forward through policy or politics (with the exception that there was a CEE Bill introduced to UK Parliament recently which actually does those things). I would also say it can enable greater mobilisation to a degree as people are much more used to turning out for electoral politics where local groups within XR may not have as tangible organising points locally.
That’s really interesting and I didn’t know about this. I’ve now found a page on your website explaining the funding for TerraPraxis (I missed it initially as it was referred to as Terra Praxis and not Energy for Humanity). Interestingly enough, a friend/colleague of mine from XR is now working for them, small world. You mentioned elsewhere that you often have 20 or so pages of research for each charity recommendation and I was wondering if these were accessible at all as I would be interested in reading more about the reasons behind funding for TerraPraxis and Carbon180 beyond the summaries on the website, specifically if you had any quantification of EV/ the possible impact of these two groups on carbon emissions? And are there other examples of hits-based giving from previous years you can point me towards that FP Climate Fund has funded as I can seemingly only find the usual suspects of CfRN and CATF on your climate page!
3. Progressive movements impact
The rise of progressive climate movements recently is only one example of where I was drawing the general high expected value of social movements. The other being historical research from Harvard researcher Erica Chenoweth which found that any nonviolent social movement that garnered over 3.5% of the population in active support, never failed to achieve their aims. There were some limitations to this study in terms of audience (primarily Global South countries) however I believe it is worth noting nonetheless. Then of course there is a slight element of anecdotal evidence from history i.e. Civil Rights Movement, Indian Independence, Serbian revolution and so on.
I would agree about the unintended risks and uncertainties around movements, especially decentralised ones such as TSM and XR where it is more likely you’ll have individuals or groups that could go AWOL to put it bluntly and come out against certain important solutions i.e. CCS or nuclear like you said. To a degree I think this could be mitigated by the approach taken by the movement in terms of levels of decentralisation and central opinions on certain policies (or having none, such as XR)
4. Neglectedness and quantifying expected values
I definitely agree about the marginal returns to funds and it was implied but not obvious in my comment that in my opinion, XR could achieve a lot more given an increase in funds and that its main bottleneck to success currently was financial. The second point about the impact of XR on emissions is much more tricky to calculate and one I wanted to ask you about.
How would you even go about doing an EV calculation for a group such as TSM or XR where the causal link from the work they do to change in emissions seems so distant and vague? For example, if I had to try break down very crudely, it would be something like:
Direct action → Media coverage → change in attitude of public/policy maker → growing public support for climate → pressure on policymakers for more green legislation → green legislation passes → climate emissions affected.
Obviously this is very basic but not only are the uncertainties for the second and third links (most of them actually) quite large in my opinion, this whole chain could have a time lag of 5-10 years with subconscious effects on people so how can we quantify things like that in our EVs appropriately? Not to mention that there would be 100s of other factors that can lead to a change in attitudes of the public or policy makers so how do we determine how much of that was a movement vs other factors?
5. Incremental vs. transformational.
Apologies for the bad example of the Paris Agreement, yes it’s not legislation but hopefully it made the point well enough. I can see presidents wouldn’t scrap certain policies that are favourable to both parties (such as innovation budgets or tax credits for businesses that Republicans are likely to support) however surely this would break down for some climate legislation. Another example I’m plucking out of thin air would be a policy to divert subsidies from fossil fuels to renewable sources. I’m fairly certain that there is a swath of examples that would fit the bill in terms that most Republicans would oppose but Democrats would support and are good for the environment, such as the above one. Surely then all of these policies would be up for reversal if leadership of a country changed, whereas if 70-80% of the population, including Republicans, supported climate change legislation sufficiently (via a successful social movement) then even Republican representatives would not want to endorse reversals.
It seems like we’re slightly talking about different things though as what you say is true for groups such as CATF who (probably) only support robust policies that are favourable by both sides. However where I think the difference would like is other green policies as the one I mentioned above that could be essential in reducing emissions but are more divisive politically currently, where a social movement could (but could also not) work to increase general public support for climate legislation.