Lots of good stuff here! I work in the climate change field so I have expertise here, although it’s crucial to note I haven’t spent my career comparing the risk that climate change poses relative to the other big topics that concern EAs.
It’s not surprising given my biases that I always grimace a little when EAs talk about climate. It’s an easy target—lots of attention, tons of media hubbub, plenty of misinformed opinions and outright grifters, and of course, lack of direct existential threat. Hey look, here’s an issue that most EAs care about that’s already getting attention and talent, and if you run the numbers, according to our values...that’s more than enough attention! So come work on an underserved issue like AI or pandemic risk! It makes sense to use it as a point of contrast and I’m glad that 80K Hours still takes climate change seriously. However, the framing could maybe be better, I’m not sure, I need to think about it more.
One small qualm within the well researched piece—the plastic bag bit is off. Disregarding the fact that plastic bag fees aren’t just about carbon reductions, that graph shows that as long as you don’t make reusable bags out of cotton, reusable bags do exactly what you want them to do. Now, that’s not to say those policies are great, there’s plenty of issues with them, but I don’t find the example to be compelling evidence, especially because no policy demands cotton bags nor do most people use cotton bags. I don’t remember that Danish LCA to be particularly good either.
Lots of good stuff here! I work in the climate change field so I have expertise here, although it’s crucial to note I haven’t spent my career comparing the risk that climate change poses relative to the other big topics that concern EAs.
It’s not surprising given my biases that I always grimace a little when EAs talk about climate. It’s an easy target—lots of attention, tons of media hubbub, plenty of misinformed opinions and outright grifters, and of course, lack of direct existential threat. Hey look, here’s an issue that most EAs care about that’s already getting attention and talent, and if you run the numbers, according to our values...that’s more than enough attention! So come work on an underserved issue like AI or pandemic risk! It makes sense to use it as a point of contrast and I’m glad that 80K Hours still takes climate change seriously. However, the framing could maybe be better, I’m not sure, I need to think about it more.
One small qualm within the well researched piece—the plastic bag bit is off. Disregarding the fact that plastic bag fees aren’t just about carbon reductions, that graph shows that as long as you don’t make reusable bags out of cotton, reusable bags do exactly what you want them to do. Now, that’s not to say those policies are great, there’s plenty of issues with them, but I don’t find the example to be compelling evidence, especially because no policy demands cotton bags nor do most people use cotton bags. I don’t remember that Danish LCA to be particularly good either.