[Epistemic status: climate change is outside of my areas of competence, I’m mostly reporting what I’ve heard from others, often in low-bandwidth conversations. I think their views are stronger overall evidence than my own impressions based on having engaged on the order of 10 hours with climate change from an existential risk perspective.]
FWIW, before having engaged with the case made by that report, I’m skeptical whether climate change is a significant “direct” existential risk. (As opposed to something that hurts our ability to prevent or mitigate other risks, and might be very important for that reason.) This is mostly based on:
My loose impression that 1-5 other people whose reasoning I trust and have engaged more deeply with that question have concluded that climate change is unlikely to be a “direct” extinction risk, and me not being aware of any other case for why climate change might be a particularly large existential risk otherwise (i.e. I don’t have seen suggested mechanisms for how/why climate change might permanently reduce the value/quality of the future that seemed significantly more plausible to me than just-so stories one could tell about almost any future development). Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a publicly accessible presentation of that reasoning (apart from Halstead’s report mentioned above).
FWIW, I’d also guess that the number of EAs with deep expertise on climate change is smaller than optimal. However, I’m very uncertain about this, and I don’t see particular reasons why I would have good intuitions about large-scale talent allocation questions (it’s even quite plausible that I’m misinformed about the number of EAs that do have deep expertise on climate change).
[Epistemic status: climate change is outside of my areas of competence, I’m mostly reporting what I’ve heard from others, often in low-bandwidth conversations. I think their views are stronger overall evidence than my own impressions based on having engaged on the order of 10 hours with climate change from an existential risk perspective.]
FWIW, before having engaged with the case made by that report, I’m skeptical whether climate change is a significant “direct” existential risk. (As opposed to something that hurts our ability to prevent or mitigate other risks, and might be very important for that reason.) This is mostly based on:
John Halstead’s work on this question, which I found accessible and mostly convincing.
My loose impression that 1-5 other people whose reasoning I trust and have engaged more deeply with that question have concluded that climate change is unlikely to be a “direct” extinction risk, and me not being aware of any other case for why climate change might be a particularly large existential risk otherwise (i.e. I don’t have seen suggested mechanisms for how/why climate change might permanently reduce the value/quality of the future that seemed significantly more plausible to me than just-so stories one could tell about almost any future development). Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a publicly accessible presentation of that reasoning (apart from Halstead’s report mentioned above).
FWIW, I’d also guess that the number of EAs with deep expertise on climate change is smaller than optimal. However, I’m very uncertain about this, and I don’t see particular reasons why I would have good intuitions about large-scale talent allocation questions (it’s even quite plausible that I’m misinformed about the number of EAs that do have deep expertise on climate change).