Can you make your model of indirect risks accessable to the public? Its asking for access. Thanks a lot.
Also, why do you assume that “most of the risk of existential catastrophe stems from AI, biorisk and currently unforeseen technological risks.”? My impression from earlier in the chapter is that you are essentially drawing the idea you can essentially ignore other potential causes from the Precipice. Is this correct?
Moreover, this assumption only seems true if you assume an X-Risk will come as a single hazard. If it is, say, a cascading risk, cascading to civilisational collapse then extinction, then the idea these are the biggest risks should be questioned. Simultanously, if you view it as a multi-pulsed thing, say civilisational collapse from one hazard or a series of hazards or cascades, and then followed by whatever may (slowly) make us extinct- once civilisation is collapsed its easier for smaller hazards to kill us all, then once again the primacy of these hazards reduces. Only if you take a reductive view that sees extinction as primarily due to direct, single or near single, hazards that kill everyone or basically everyone, can this model be valid.
Of course, you do talk a little about multipulsed, subextinction risks followed by recovery being harder, but not in much detail. In particular, you claim that extreme climate change may make civilisational recovery from collapse much harder, but then don’t seem to deal in detail with this question, which may be considered to be highly important, particularly if we think civilisational collapse is considerably more likely than extinction. Moreover, you suggest that “there is some chance of civilisational collapse due to nuclear war or engineered pandemics,” essentially suggesting other causes of civilisational collapse that are less direct, and therefore could be made more likely due to climate change, are negligable. This assumption should be stated and evidenced, and yet you seem to include no sources on this.
Moreover, you state (uncited) that “the main indirect effect is Great power Conflict.” Whats your source for this claim, and why are you so certain of this that you are confident that you can discount other indirect effects? This feels like the assumptions once again should be supported;
If this is the case, then I might say that relying on the (in my opinion) rather reductive, hazard-centric, simple risk assessment model of Ord etc. is our crux of disagreement. This is why I would say from my (still moderately limited unfortunatly) reading of the report, it appears that most of your facts are in order, however a lot of what I think that it is very bad that you fail to mention (systemic risk, cascading risk, vulnerabilities, exposures, complex risk assessments (I don’t use this to suggest my way is inherently intellectually superior than yours, as indeed it is a plausible position to hold that X-Risks may emerge out of epistemically simplier more direct more “simple” risks) etc) originates out of this hazard-centric approach. I won’t overthrow a paradigm in a single comment, and I won’t even try, but do please tell me if you agree with me that this is the crux of our disagreement. Moreover, whilst in a previous comment to me you have said you have argued for this methodology of viewing X-Risks at length in the piece, I am yet to find such an argument. If you could point me to where you think you make this argument in the piece, I will reread that section, or I may have missed it (apologies if I have). If not, it feels this approach needs considerably greater justification.
I have more comments/criticisms which I will post in other comments, but certainly on this indirect risk things, these are my questions.
Yes that is correct re my assessment of the other existential risks. I’m taking a view similar to Toby Ord and I suppose the rest of the EA community about where the main risks are. Of course, my main goal in the report is not to make this substantive case; I largely take it as given.
I don’t really see how viewing climate change as a cascading risk would change the overall risk assessment. If you argue that climate change is a large cascading risk then you would have to think that climate would play an important role in starting the cascade from collapse to extinction. I don’t see how it could do that and explain why at length in the report. Can you lay out a concrete scenario that sketches this cascading risk worry that isn’t already discussed in the report?
The report does suggest that climate change would make civilisational recovery harder but for plausible levels of warming, it would not be a large barrier to recovery and this should be clear from the substantive discussion in the report
Moreover, you suggest that “there is some chance of civilisational collapse due to nuclear war or engineered pandemics,” essentially suggesting other causes of civilisational collapse that are less direct, and therefore could be made more likely due to climate change, are negligable. This assumption should be stated and evidenced, and yet you seem to include no sources on this.
The whole report is about whether climate change could lead to civilisational collapse or something close to it. What other mechanisms do you have in mind that are not already discussed in the report?
The influence of climate change on great power war or war more generally seems like the most obvious indirect risk of climate change that could make a substantial difference to the scale of climate change. It is often argued that climate change is a threat multiplier for conflict risk. I discuss the literature on this at length. What other indirect risks do you think might be comparably important?
It does seem that you think that viewing climate change as a cascading risk would make a large difference to my conclusion. I don’t understand what you think this cascading risk actually is that is not already discussed in the report.
I’m not sure which comment you are referring to? I argued that the direct/indirect approach is conceptually exhaustive, which is trivially true.
“I don’t really see how viewing climate change as a cascading risk would change the overall risk assessment. If you argue that climate change is a large cascading risk then you would have to think that climate would play an important role in starting the cascade from collapse to extinction. I don’t see how it could do that and explain why at length in the report. Can you lay out a concrete scenario that sketches this cascading risk worry that isn’t already discussed in the report?”
Having read the report, I am still unclear where in the report you lay out this substantive case. Could you please point this out to me, and I will be happy to reread it as I must have missed it. Also note I don’t just refer to cascading risks, but to systemic risks, existential vulnerabilities and exposures etc. Please show me where in your report you make a substantive case against these ideas as well. Thanks!
Moreover, cascading risks may only be to civilisational collapse, and may not even get you to extinction. If, as you suggest, climate change makes recovery harder, this may be a major problem from an X-Risk perspective. I agree, its unlikely a cascade would directly lead to extinction, but if it leads to major societal collapse (which your piece also doesn’t seem to define), and recovery is harder, this may be enough to pose an X-Risk.
“The report does suggest that climate change would make civilisational recovery harder but for plausible levels of warming, it would not be a large barrier to recovery and this should be clear from the substantive discussion in the report”
The report suggests this but doesn’t, as far as I can tell from having read the report, make this case particularly substantively. Also, in the section where this seems to be discussed most at length “subsequent collapse”, there doesn’t seem to be any citations If you could point me to what sources you have used to show that it shouldn’t pose a large barrier to recovery, this would be nice. You suggest it should be clear from the report, so if you can point me to where in the report this should be clear from, that would be great. Apologies if I am being stupid and have just missed something obvious in the report.
“The whole report is about whether climate change could lead to civilisational collapse or something close to it. What other mechanisms do you have in mind that are not already discussed in the report?”
How about a scenario where a multitude of factors eg climate related damages, civil conflict, interstate conflict, bioweaponary, natural disasters and economic collapse all work in concert with each other? What I am trying to suggest is that by shutting down the possibilities to bio and nuclear war, you reduce the role that climate change could play in bringing about collapse.
“The influence of climate change on great power war or war more generally seems like the most obvious indirect risk of climate change that could make a substantial difference to the scale of climate change.”
Saying something is the most obvious isn’t evidence or a justification. Your report is 400 pages long, I am pretty sure you have space to justify this core part of your methodological approach. Also, just because one thing is the “most” obvious doesn’t mean others aren’t worthy of consideration. Also, I am often very unclear what an indirect risk means, which again you don’t seem to define in your report. If you could define this for me, I would be happy to answer your question.
Sorry if some of this is unclear. However, I really think a lot of your key ideas could so with better citation/definition. I also think that ignoring a lot of these concepts which are common in the literature, and then putting the burden on me to hash out the arguments in a comment on my weekend, rather than actually addressing these concepts, even if you were to reject them, in your 400 page report, is a little odd. Nonetheless, thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments thus far, and apologies if I have missed anything in the report- it is very long and I read it late at night
I think it might help to make this discussion more concrete if you gave an example of what you mean by a cascading risk. It’s hard to defend the arguments in the report when I’m not sure what you are saying I have missed in my analysis. I talk about risks to the food system, and the spillover effects that might come from that (eg conflict), I talk about purported effects on crime, I talk about drought, I talk about tipping points etc. What is the casual story you have in mind?
The substantive discussion is the outline all of the various impacts that I have discussed and summarising the literature on economic costs, which tends to find costs of 4ºC are on the order of 5% of GDP. Unless something is radically missing from these analyses, I’m not sure how climate change could make a large difference to the chance of recovery from collapse.
How about a scenario where a multitude of factors eg climate related damages, civil conflict, interstate conflict, bioweaponary, natural disasters and economic collapse all work in concert with each other?
I discuss the potential impacts of climate damages, civil conflict, interstate conflict and the economic impact of climate change at considerable length. Even if these all work in concert with each other, my substantive conclusion is unaffected. I also explicitly discuss the possibility that climate change will cause the use of bioweapons in the report.
What I am trying to suggest is that by shutting down the possibilities to bio and nuclear war, you reduce the role that climate change could play in bringing about collapse.
I don’t shut down the possibility, I argue against it at considerable length.
However, I really think a lot of your key ideas could so with better citation/definition. I also think that ignoring a lot of these concepts which are common in the literature, and then putting the burden on me to hash out the arguments in a comment on my weekend, rather than actually addressing these concepts, even if you were to reject them, in your 400 page report, is a little odd.
You have made a series of conceptual criticisms of the report. I have said that my conceptual approach is exhaustive, which is true, but you seem to think this is unsatisfactory. I don’t think it is unreasonable for you to explain to me what you think I have missed.
A direct climate impact is an impact of climate change for which the proximal cause of the damage is not human-on-human interaction. An example would be something like heat stress deaths or crop failures from drought. An indirect climate impact is an impact for which the proximate cause is human-on-human damage, but for which the ultimate cause is climate change. An example would be crime, conflict or undermines institutions.
Saying something is the most obvious isn’t evidence or a justification. Your report is 400 pages long, I am pretty sure you have space to justify this core part of your methodological approach. Also, just because one thing is the “most” obvious doesn’t mean others aren’t worthy of consideration.
I think appeals to common sense and what is obvious are often permissible in arguments. Which indirect effect do you think is more important?
I was expecting the discussion to be more like ‘hear is why you are wrong about emissions/climate sensitivity/runaway greenhouse/impacts on the food system/impacts on conflict/...’
So sorry for the lateness of this reply, I have been super busy, and this reply will also only be short as I ma very busy. It would be good to organise a meeting to chat about this at some point if your interested.
On cascading risks, I tink a good recent discussion of cascading risk is found in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25021-8 . A plausible causal story for how climate change leads to a cascade may be as follows. This is obviously flawed and incomplete and clearly needs more study:
To respond to growing threats from climate change, adaptation measures (often technological) will be put in place. However, these adaptation measures, such as physical defences, are often very fragile. Whilst it is possible agricultural production increases, this would also likely be due to adaptation measures, with new things introduced likely to be less resilient due to lack of experience. Moreover, as certain regions get agriculture more badly hit, it is possible you see a few increasing agricultural hubs as those places less effected by climate change/could adapt quicker. This further increases vulnerability
One or a number of critical nodes in this system are hit by a hazard, either one made more likely by climate change, or by another hazard. Sychrnonous failure causes diversion of resources to these areas, and the economic shock makes it harder to sustain adaptation infrastructure, which may then start to fail
Climate impacts cause increased civil unrest. This causes greater economic and political insecurity, making greater diversion of resources away from climate adaptation and towards combating the symptomns of this. The resources exerted can’t match with the pressures on them, both environmental, climatic, social, political, economic. A near complete collapse of a mid-sized economy ensues, with global reprucussions
Meanwhile, climate change has made an engineered pandemic more likely by increasing the number of omnicidal actors. One of these engineered pandemics occur killing 1% of the worlds population, sychronous with a major drought, causing global economic collapse. In response to the drought, a water war between mid-sized powers ensues, leading to the involvement of major powers. Sanctions and embargoes between the powers lead to further economic damage. This is combined by significant food shortages from the drought, and socio-economic damage from the pandemic.
Political tensions rise in India, leading to mass protests. The failure of the Indian government to relieve a Muslim majority region of the famine causes tensions, a police massacre causes this to go into outright rebellion. The Indian government collapses, with major global economic consequences.
Climate impacts continue to scale across the world, with the economic damage from the famine, pandemic and collapse of the Indian government spreading. In the subsequent economic collapse, a major economy defaults on its debts, leading to further ewconomic turmoil. Civil unrest breaks out in another major economy (say Germany), once again causing economic collapse. The new Indian government, crippled and weakened and still under pressure from the civil war, promises to defend its water resources at all costs, however China, also suffering from a drought, cuts off the source of Brahmaputra. A tactical nuclear weapon is set off. Whilst this doesn’t lead to global nuclear war, in the aftermath of this, markets collapse
With a collapsing global economy and mounting climate damages, adaptation measures cannot be meaningfully carried out, as maintences can’t be afforded. This causes more and more damage.
This is the example of a cascade. I didn’t take it all the way to collapse/ extinction, but I think you could probably carry it on yourself. This is just A scenario I just came up with. Its probably not the most plausible. But there are thousands of such scenarios, each which climate change is a key factor in causing, interacting in different ways. this is what I mean by cascade.
On the seperate point of your indirect vs direct framing, it seems like my issues with it are two fold. I tend to think indirect risk is just so much larger a subset of things than direct risk (involves many of the causes of hazards, as well as I assume all exposures and vulnerabilities?), and yet I don’t think your treatment of it gives it this necessary depth. So maybe in theory your framework is well defined, but in practice the category of indirect risk is like “the rest” and so doesn’t seem to give a useful structure for defining what these key impacts are. I think, even if unintentional, the rhetoric of employing such a device privelages direct risks hugely, which I tend to think leads nearly inevitably to your conclusion due to this privelaging.
When you say you expected other criticisms, I can understand why you may be frustrated with my focus on the meta-issues. But I broadly don’t have much of a problem with what you say, and certainly don’t on any areas outside my area of expertise. Its what you don’t say, and the methodology you have used that lets you get there, that worries me. Thats why I have focused on these meta-issues, because in terms of where I think this piece goes substantially wrong, I think its that.
As I have said previously, I think what you miss out is important as you are in a really unique place in the community by no fault of your own. There are probably few people deferred to in EA more than you are, so the worry if you miss things out, or if your methodology is wrong (and as I am sure you will admit no one is perfect) is this will get propograted as orthodoxy through the community. I know you tend to not think of yourself as this sort of person, and I don’t think these epistemically deeply unhealthy dynamics are your fault.
Anyway, sorry I couldn’t do a more substantive reply, I am super busy, and it certainly doesn’t seem like forum comments are the most constructive to this discussion. Would you like to have a chat about this at some point so we can really hear each others persepctives?
Thanks for the comment, it was interesting to have examples.
By chance, do you have some documentation on cascading risks caused by shortfalls on energy production? Or more data on what would cause the economy to collapse? I’m looking for this since I have made some posts on energy depletion and trying to keep updating.
By the way, I find the lack of answer by John rather worrying, especially as this seems to be a crucial point you’re making, especially in our interconnected world. Did you manage to chat with him?
Can you make your model of indirect risks accessable to the public? Its asking for access. Thanks a lot.
Also, why do you assume that “most of the risk of existential catastrophe stems from AI, biorisk and currently unforeseen technological risks.”? My impression from earlier in the chapter is that you are essentially drawing the idea you can essentially ignore other potential causes from the Precipice. Is this correct?
Moreover, this assumption only seems true if you assume an X-Risk will come as a single hazard. If it is, say, a cascading risk, cascading to civilisational collapse then extinction, then the idea these are the biggest risks should be questioned. Simultanously, if you view it as a multi-pulsed thing, say civilisational collapse from one hazard or a series of hazards or cascades, and then followed by whatever may (slowly) make us extinct- once civilisation is collapsed its easier for smaller hazards to kill us all, then once again the primacy of these hazards reduces. Only if you take a reductive view that sees extinction as primarily due to direct, single or near single, hazards that kill everyone or basically everyone, can this model be valid.
Of course, you do talk a little about multipulsed, subextinction risks followed by recovery being harder, but not in much detail. In particular, you claim that extreme climate change may make civilisational recovery from collapse much harder, but then don’t seem to deal in detail with this question, which may be considered to be highly important, particularly if we think civilisational collapse is considerably more likely than extinction. Moreover, you suggest that “there is some
chance of civilisational collapse due to nuclear war or engineered pandemics,” essentially suggesting other causes of civilisational collapse that are less direct, and therefore could be made more likely due to climate change, are negligable. This assumption should be stated and evidenced, and yet you seem to include no sources on this.
Moreover, you state (uncited) that “the main indirect effect is Great power Conflict.” Whats your source for this claim, and why are you so certain of this that you are confident that you can discount other indirect effects? This feels like the assumptions once again should be supported;
If this is the case, then I might say that relying on the (in my opinion) rather reductive, hazard-centric, simple risk assessment model of Ord etc. is our crux of disagreement. This is why I would say from my (still moderately limited unfortunatly) reading of the report, it appears that most of your facts are in order, however a lot of what I think that it is very bad that you fail to mention (systemic risk, cascading risk, vulnerabilities, exposures, complex risk assessments (I don’t use this to suggest my way is inherently intellectually superior than yours, as indeed it is a plausible position to hold that X-Risks may emerge out of epistemically simplier more direct more “simple” risks) etc) originates out of this hazard-centric approach. I won’t overthrow a paradigm in a single comment, and I won’t even try, but do please tell me if you agree with me that this is the crux of our disagreement. Moreover, whilst in a previous comment to me you have said you have argued for this methodology of viewing X-Risks at length in the piece, I am yet to find such an argument. If you could point me to where you think you make this argument in the piece, I will reread that section, or I may have missed it (apologies if I have). If not, it feels this approach needs considerably greater justification.
I have more comments/criticisms which I will post in other comments, but certainly on this indirect risk things, these are my questions.
The model should be shared now.
Yes that is correct re my assessment of the other existential risks. I’m taking a view similar to Toby Ord and I suppose the rest of the EA community about where the main risks are. Of course, my main goal in the report is not to make this substantive case; I largely take it as given.
I don’t really see how viewing climate change as a cascading risk would change the overall risk assessment. If you argue that climate change is a large cascading risk then you would have to think that climate would play an important role in starting the cascade from collapse to extinction. I don’t see how it could do that and explain why at length in the report. Can you lay out a concrete scenario that sketches this cascading risk worry that isn’t already discussed in the report?
The report does suggest that climate change would make civilisational recovery harder but for plausible levels of warming, it would not be a large barrier to recovery and this should be clear from the substantive discussion in the report
The whole report is about whether climate change could lead to civilisational collapse or something close to it. What other mechanisms do you have in mind that are not already discussed in the report?
The influence of climate change on great power war or war more generally seems like the most obvious indirect risk of climate change that could make a substantial difference to the scale of climate change. It is often argued that climate change is a threat multiplier for conflict risk. I discuss the literature on this at length. What other indirect risks do you think might be comparably important?
It does seem that you think that viewing climate change as a cascading risk would make a large difference to my conclusion. I don’t understand what you think this cascading risk actually is that is not already discussed in the report.
I’m not sure which comment you are referring to? I argued that the direct/indirect approach is conceptually exhaustive, which is trivially true.
Hi John,
“I don’t really see how viewing climate change as a cascading risk would change the overall risk assessment. If you argue that climate change is a large cascading risk then you would have to think that climate would play an important role in starting the cascade from collapse to extinction. I don’t see how it could do that and explain why at length in the report. Can you lay out a concrete scenario that sketches this cascading risk worry that isn’t already discussed in the report?”
Having read the report, I am still unclear where in the report you lay out this substantive case. Could you please point this out to me, and I will be happy to reread it as I must have missed it. Also note I don’t just refer to cascading risks, but to systemic risks, existential vulnerabilities and exposures etc. Please show me where in your report you make a substantive case against these ideas as well. Thanks!
Moreover, cascading risks may only be to civilisational collapse, and may not even get you to extinction. If, as you suggest, climate change makes recovery harder, this may be a major problem from an X-Risk perspective. I agree, its unlikely a cascade would directly lead to extinction, but if it leads to major societal collapse (which your piece also doesn’t seem to define), and recovery is harder, this may be enough to pose an X-Risk.
“The report does suggest that climate change would make civilisational recovery harder but for plausible levels of warming, it would not be a large barrier to recovery and this should be clear from the substantive discussion in the report”
The report suggests this but doesn’t, as far as I can tell from having read the report, make this case particularly substantively. Also, in the section where this seems to be discussed most at length “subsequent collapse”, there doesn’t seem to be any citations If you could point me to what sources you have used to show that it shouldn’t pose a large barrier to recovery, this would be nice. You suggest it should be clear from the report, so if you can point me to where in the report this should be clear from, that would be great. Apologies if I am being stupid and have just missed something obvious in the report.
“The whole report is about whether climate change could lead to civilisational collapse or something close to it. What other mechanisms do you have in mind that are not already discussed in the report?”
How about a scenario where a multitude of factors eg climate related damages, civil conflict, interstate conflict, bioweaponary, natural disasters and economic collapse all work in concert with each other? What I am trying to suggest is that by shutting down the possibilities to bio and nuclear war, you reduce the role that climate change could play in bringing about collapse.
“The influence of climate change on great power war or war more generally seems like the most obvious indirect risk of climate change that could make a substantial difference to the scale of climate change.”
Saying something is the most obvious isn’t evidence or a justification. Your report is 400 pages long, I am pretty sure you have space to justify this core part of your methodological approach. Also, just because one thing is the “most” obvious doesn’t mean others aren’t worthy of consideration. Also, I am often very unclear what an indirect risk means, which again you don’t seem to define in your report. If you could define this for me, I would be happy to answer your question.
Sorry if some of this is unclear. However, I really think a lot of your key ideas could so with better citation/definition. I also think that ignoring a lot of these concepts which are common in the literature, and then putting the burden on me to hash out the arguments in a comment on my weekend, rather than actually addressing these concepts, even if you were to reject them, in your 400 page report, is a little odd. Nonetheless, thanks for taking the time to respond to my comments thus far, and apologies if I have missed anything in the report- it is very long and I read it late at night
Best
Gideon
I think it might help to make this discussion more concrete if you gave an example of what you mean by a cascading risk. It’s hard to defend the arguments in the report when I’m not sure what you are saying I have missed in my analysis. I talk about risks to the food system, and the spillover effects that might come from that (eg conflict), I talk about purported effects on crime, I talk about drought, I talk about tipping points etc. What is the casual story you have in mind?
The substantive discussion is the outline all of the various impacts that I have discussed and summarising the literature on economic costs, which tends to find costs of 4ºC are on the order of 5% of GDP. Unless something is radically missing from these analyses, I’m not sure how climate change could make a large difference to the chance of recovery from collapse.
I discuss the potential impacts of climate damages, civil conflict, interstate conflict and the economic impact of climate change at considerable length. Even if these all work in concert with each other, my substantive conclusion is unaffected. I also explicitly discuss the possibility that climate change will cause the use of bioweapons in the report.
I don’t shut down the possibility, I argue against it at considerable length.
You have made a series of conceptual criticisms of the report. I have said that my conceptual approach is exhaustive, which is true, but you seem to think this is unsatisfactory. I don’t think it is unreasonable for you to explain to me what you think I have missed.
A direct climate impact is an impact of climate change for which the proximal cause of the damage is not human-on-human interaction. An example would be something like heat stress deaths or crop failures from drought. An indirect climate impact is an impact for which the proximate cause is human-on-human damage, but for which the ultimate cause is climate change. An example would be crime, conflict or undermines institutions.
I think appeals to common sense and what is obvious are often permissible in arguments. Which indirect effect do you think is more important?
I was expecting the discussion to be more like ‘hear is why you are wrong about emissions/climate sensitivity/runaway greenhouse/impacts on the food system/impacts on conflict/...’
Hi John,
So sorry for the lateness of this reply, I have been super busy, and this reply will also only be short as I ma very busy. It would be good to organise a meeting to chat about this at some point if your interested.
On cascading risks, I tink a good recent discussion of cascading risk is found in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25021-8 . A plausible causal story for how climate change leads to a cascade may be as follows. This is obviously flawed and incomplete and clearly needs more study:
To respond to growing threats from climate change, adaptation measures (often technological) will be put in place. However, these adaptation measures, such as physical defences, are often very fragile. Whilst it is possible agricultural production increases, this would also likely be due to adaptation measures, with new things introduced likely to be less resilient due to lack of experience. Moreover, as certain regions get agriculture more badly hit, it is possible you see a few increasing agricultural hubs as those places less effected by climate change/could adapt quicker. This further increases vulnerability
One or a number of critical nodes in this system are hit by a hazard, either one made more likely by climate change, or by another hazard. Sychrnonous failure causes diversion of resources to these areas, and the economic shock makes it harder to sustain adaptation infrastructure, which may then start to fail
Climate impacts cause increased civil unrest. This causes greater economic and political insecurity, making greater diversion of resources away from climate adaptation and towards combating the symptomns of this. The resources exerted can’t match with the pressures on them, both environmental, climatic, social, political, economic. A near complete collapse of a mid-sized economy ensues, with global reprucussions
Meanwhile, climate change has made an engineered pandemic more likely by increasing the number of omnicidal actors. One of these engineered pandemics occur killing 1% of the worlds population, sychronous with a major drought, causing global economic collapse. In response to the drought, a water war between mid-sized powers ensues, leading to the involvement of major powers. Sanctions and embargoes between the powers lead to further economic damage. This is combined by significant food shortages from the drought, and socio-economic damage from the pandemic.
Political tensions rise in India, leading to mass protests. The failure of the Indian government to relieve a Muslim majority region of the famine causes tensions, a police massacre causes this to go into outright rebellion. The Indian government collapses, with major global economic consequences.
Climate impacts continue to scale across the world, with the economic damage from the famine, pandemic and collapse of the Indian government spreading. In the subsequent economic collapse, a major economy defaults on its debts, leading to further ewconomic turmoil. Civil unrest breaks out in another major economy (say Germany), once again causing economic collapse. The new Indian government, crippled and weakened and still under pressure from the civil war, promises to defend its water resources at all costs, however China, also suffering from a drought, cuts off the source of Brahmaputra. A tactical nuclear weapon is set off. Whilst this doesn’t lead to global nuclear war, in the aftermath of this, markets collapse
With a collapsing global economy and mounting climate damages, adaptation measures cannot be meaningfully carried out, as maintences can’t be afforded. This causes more and more damage.
This is the example of a cascade. I didn’t take it all the way to collapse/ extinction, but I think you could probably carry it on yourself. This is just A scenario I just came up with. Its probably not the most plausible. But there are thousands of such scenarios, each which climate change is a key factor in causing, interacting in different ways. this is what I mean by cascade.
On the seperate point of your indirect vs direct framing, it seems like my issues with it are two fold. I tend to think indirect risk is just so much larger a subset of things than direct risk (involves many of the causes of hazards, as well as I assume all exposures and vulnerabilities?), and yet I don’t think your treatment of it gives it this necessary depth. So maybe in theory your framework is well defined, but in practice the category of indirect risk is like “the rest” and so doesn’t seem to give a useful structure for defining what these key impacts are. I think, even if unintentional, the rhetoric of employing such a device privelages direct risks hugely, which I tend to think leads nearly inevitably to your conclusion due to this privelaging.
When you say you expected other criticisms, I can understand why you may be frustrated with my focus on the meta-issues. But I broadly don’t have much of a problem with what you say, and certainly don’t on any areas outside my area of expertise. Its what you don’t say, and the methodology you have used that lets you get there, that worries me. Thats why I have focused on these meta-issues, because in terms of where I think this piece goes substantially wrong, I think its that.
As I have said previously, I think what you miss out is important as you are in a really unique place in the community by no fault of your own. There are probably few people deferred to in EA more than you are, so the worry if you miss things out, or if your methodology is wrong (and as I am sure you will admit no one is perfect) is this will get propograted as orthodoxy through the community. I know you tend to not think of yourself as this sort of person, and I don’t think these epistemically deeply unhealthy dynamics are your fault.
Anyway, sorry I couldn’t do a more substantive reply, I am super busy, and it certainly doesn’t seem like forum comments are the most constructive to this discussion. Would you like to have a chat about this at some point so we can really hear each others persepctives?
Thanks for the comment, it was interesting to have examples.
By chance, do you have some documentation on cascading risks caused by shortfalls on energy production? Or more data on what would cause the economy to collapse? I’m looking for this since I have made some posts on energy depletion and trying to keep updating.
By the way, I find the lack of answer by John rather worrying, especially as this seems to be a crucial point you’re making, especially in our interconnected world. Did you manage to chat with him?