A carbon footprint isn’t an equal fraction of the carbon emitted in the world, it’s the amount you personally emit.
I agree, but I would say the carbon footprint of the mean human can be calculated by diving the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the total population.
There’s no equivalent for x-risk; the world would not be safer if you didn’t exist.
I think there is an equivalent for x-risk to some extent. For example, GHG emissions contribute to x-risk from climate change. Similarly, in the same way that some people have a larger carbon footprint, I guess some people have a larger x-risk footprint. For example, people in the apocalyptic residual (see Bostrom 2019) working in a BSL-4 lab would have a larger x-risk footprint than a typical rural farmer in Kenya.
However, I agree the concept of footprint is flawed in many ways. This post was just a calculation I found interesting, and fun to do. As I said above:
In any case, effective donations and other actions are:
Better seen as a great way of increasing impact. Thinking about them as a form of offsetting could limit our ambition and lead to a smaller impact.
Often complementary instead of mutually exclusive.
Thanks for commenting, Kirsten.
I agree, but I would say the carbon footprint of the mean human can be calculated by diving the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by the total population.
I think there is an equivalent for x-risk to some extent. For example, GHG emissions contribute to x-risk from climate change. Similarly, in the same way that some people have a larger carbon footprint, I guess some people have a larger x-risk footprint. For example, people in the apocalyptic residual (see Bostrom 2019) working in a BSL-4 lab would have a larger x-risk footprint than a typical rural farmer in Kenya.
However, I agree the concept of footprint is flawed in many ways. This post was just a calculation I found interesting, and fun to do. As I said above: