Thank you for writing this post you bring up several excellent points, especially with regards to climate change permanently reducing the potential of humanity. I’d like to expand on a few of the points you raised:
Point 12: EAs can skills-build working in climate change
The EA movement could learn about movement-buidling, public policy work and professionalization from the climate change movement. If we consider the breadth and depth of the professionalization of climate change it’s impressive, covering: environment engineering, environmental sciences, geography & geology (they’ve had environmental agendas for decades) and environmental studies (society/culture/policy side).
There are many opportunities to engage with climate change fairly easily, which could add to the collective intelligence of the community and help individual EA’s skills-build while doing direct work (preventing moral drift). It would be good for the EA community to identify the most promising opportunities within the climate change movement because there are a vast range and not all are equally effective.
Points 14/15: Climate change is not talent- or (comparatively) funding-constrained
The climate change sector is professionalized, a priority (if nominal) for corporations, governments and research institutions. This means that, potentially, a really great EA-aligned climate change charity could attract significant funding from outside the community (counterfactually these resources probably wouldn’t be easily moved to a different cause area).
This is good because a) the community is not splitting its monetary resources over fewer and fewer cause areas of and b) it raises the profile of EA and spreads EA-like thinking into a movement which already values evidence-backed reasoning, long-termism (or mid-termism) and grappling with complex problems.
Point 16: Why we may lose out potential EAs
Many potential EA’s probably know a good deal about climate change, much more so than wild animal welfare or AI safety risk. By not seriously considering climate change, these people might stick to their priors since they have more confidence in them and have developed them over a long period of time. Engaging with people at their level of knowledge, showing evidence that the community has committed serious time and consideration to climate change could (eventually) convince these people it’s not a priority (if that’s the conclusion we come to).
The level of depth of the 80K article is “Exploratory”. Further, Founder’s Pledge suggests 2 charities where it’s harder to measure an individual’s marginal impact (unless they have significant money to donate).
Thank you for writing this post you bring up several excellent points, especially with regards to climate change permanently reducing the potential of humanity. I’d like to expand on a few of the points you raised:
Point 12: EAs can skills-build working in climate change
The EA movement could learn about movement-buidling, public policy work and professionalization from the climate change movement. If we consider the breadth and depth of the professionalization of climate change it’s impressive, covering: environment engineering, environmental sciences, geography & geology (they’ve had environmental agendas for decades) and environmental studies (society/culture/policy side).
There are many opportunities to engage with climate change fairly easily, which could add to the collective intelligence of the community and help individual EA’s skills-build while doing direct work (preventing moral drift). It would be good for the EA community to identify the most promising opportunities within the climate change movement because there are a vast range and not all are equally effective.
Points 14/15: Climate change is not talent- or (comparatively) funding-constrained
The climate change sector is professionalized, a priority (if nominal) for corporations, governments and research institutions. This means that, potentially, a really great EA-aligned climate change charity could attract significant funding from outside the community (counterfactually these resources probably wouldn’t be easily moved to a different cause area).
This is good because a) the community is not splitting its monetary resources over fewer and fewer cause areas of and b) it raises the profile of EA and spreads EA-like thinking into a movement which already values evidence-backed reasoning, long-termism (or mid-termism) and grappling with complex problems.
Point 16: Why we may lose out potential EAs
Many potential EA’s probably know a good deal about climate change, much more so than wild animal welfare or AI safety risk. By not seriously considering climate change, these people might stick to their priors since they have more confidence in them and have developed them over a long period of time. Engaging with people at their level of knowledge, showing evidence that the community has committed serious time and consideration to climate change could (eventually) convince these people it’s not a priority (if that’s the conclusion we come to).
The level of depth of the 80K article is “Exploratory”. Further, Founder’s Pledge suggests 2 charities where it’s harder to measure an individual’s marginal impact (unless they have significant money to donate).