Thanks all for your comments. A few friends have emailed me and made a couple of points about this post.
1. On the first-order effects of warming, the Stern Review figures are now 10 years out of date, and the IPCC SR1.5C expects worse impacts to welfare than previously stated, under all trajectories. See Chapter 5 of the report, and Byers et al. 2018.
2. A good source on the impact on GDP and societies through sea level rise is Pretis et al. (2018, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society)
3. The goal for climate change mitigation should be getting to net zero emissions as fast as possible, as anything other than that still causes warming, and this goal is absent from many EA and the 80,000 Hours write-up.
4. Absent from these discussions are climate economists, who would be able to help us grapple with this more concretely. Some suggested economists to research (and for the 80,000 Hours Podcast) are Adair Turner, Simon Dietz, Cameron Hepburn, and Joeri Rogelj.
3. The goal for climate change mitigation should be getting to net zero emissions as fast as possible, as anything other than that still causes warming, and this goal is absent from many EA and the 80,000 Hours write-up.
If there’s already the goal of reducing emissions in general, with more reduction being better, is there any reason to add a goal about the zero level specifically? EA generally (and I think rightly) just cares about the expected amount of problem reduction, with exceptions where zero matters being things like diseases that can bounce back from a small number of cases.
I think the zero-goal matters because (1) if you plan for, say, 50% reduction, or even 66%, you might end up with a very different course of action than if you plan for 100% reduction. Specifically, I’m concerned that a renewable-heavy plan may be able to reduce emissions 50% straightforwardly but that the final 25-45% will be very difficult, and that a course correction later may be harder than it is now; (2) most people and groups are focused on marginal emissions reductions rather than reaching zero, so they are planning incorrectly. I trust the EA/rationalist ethos more than any other, to help this community analyze this issue holistically, mindful of the zero-goal, and to properly consider S-risks and X-risks.
Thanks all for your comments. A few friends have emailed me and made a couple of points about this post.
1. On the first-order effects of warming, the Stern Review figures are now 10 years out of date, and the IPCC SR1.5C expects worse impacts to welfare than previously stated, under all trajectories. See Chapter 5 of the report, and Byers et al. 2018.
2. A good source on the impact on GDP and societies through sea level rise is Pretis et al. (2018, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society)
3. The goal for climate change mitigation should be getting to net zero emissions as fast as possible, as anything other than that still causes warming, and this goal is absent from many EA and the 80,000 Hours write-up.
4. Absent from these discussions are climate economists, who would be able to help us grapple with this more concretely. Some suggested economists to research (and for the 80,000 Hours Podcast) are Adair Turner, Simon Dietz, Cameron Hepburn, and Joeri Rogelj.
If there’s already the goal of reducing emissions in general, with more reduction being better, is there any reason to add a goal about the zero level specifically? EA generally (and I think rightly) just cares about the expected amount of problem reduction, with exceptions where zero matters being things like diseases that can bounce back from a small number of cases.
I think the zero-goal matters because (1) if you plan for, say, 50% reduction, or even 66%, you might end up with a very different course of action than if you plan for 100% reduction. Specifically, I’m concerned that a renewable-heavy plan may be able to reduce emissions 50% straightforwardly but that the final 25-45% will be very difficult, and that a course correction later may be harder than it is now; (2) most people and groups are focused on marginal emissions reductions rather than reaching zero, so they are planning incorrectly. I trust the EA/rationalist ethos more than any other, to help this community analyze this issue holistically, mindful of the zero-goal, and to properly consider S-risks and X-risks.