I think this is a useful question and I’m glad to be discussing this.
I agree with many of your concerns—and would love to see a more culturally-unified EA on the axis of how conscious we are of our own impact—but I also think you’re failing to acknowledge something crucial: As much as EA is about altruism, it is also about focus on what’s important, and your post doesn’t acknowledge this as a potential trade-off for the folks you’re discussing.
You’ll find a lot of EA folks perceive climate change as a real problem but also perceive marginal carbon costs as not a thing worth focusing on given all the other problems in the world and the fact that carbon is offsetable. You are reading this as a “careless attitude” but I don’t think this is a fair characterization. There are real tradeoffs to be made here about how to use marginal attention; they may be offsetting and just not talking about it, or deciding that it’s not going to make enough difference in the short run, but regardless I think you have insufficient evidence to conclude that their attitude is wrong.
(I personally offset all my CO2 with Wren and think for at least 5 minutes about each plane flight I decide to take to decide if it is worth it; but have never written about this till now, and would have no reason to bother writing it down.)
And yet I highly doubt that most EA do that. You say that carbon is offsetable but it’s still a vigorous debate. The measures we take to offset the said carbone often won’t remove carbon before years, if not centuries.
For someone who goes to a conference, how can they really measure the trade-offs? meeting one person who helps them get a EA job with 10 other persons from other contexts? It sounds hypocritical. Truth is, it’s hard to calculate truthfully the impact you’re having at these conferences because the results take years; however, the carbon is spent. Here. Now. And seeing global warming as a ‘marginal’ is a grave error to make IMO.
These folks justify their highly carbonate cost of living by saying they make impact elsewhere,but they can’t really calculate it.
All this doesn’t make my post less relevant : 1) we need to talk about it more and have some kind of pledge/be transparent about it 2) we need to do something about this carelesness because of lack of accountability.
Here, “marginal” means “on the margin”—would it be better for me to have spent a certain amount of attention on this issue or a different issue? The word can mean something “of little importance” in other contexts, though.
I share your general skepticism about offsets—it is possible, but you have to be really careful the offset is actually counterfactual (e.g., that it results in the creation of a good thing that wouldn’t have happened but for you paying the offset). Don’t know about Wren specifically.
I think this is a useful question and I’m glad to be discussing this.
I agree with many of your concerns—and would love to see a more culturally-unified EA on the axis of how conscious we are of our own impact—but I also think you’re failing to acknowledge something crucial: As much as EA is about altruism, it is also about focus on what’s important, and your post doesn’t acknowledge this as a potential trade-off for the folks you’re discussing.
You’ll find a lot of EA folks perceive climate change as a real problem but also perceive marginal carbon costs as not a thing worth focusing on given all the other problems in the world and the fact that carbon is offsetable. You are reading this as a “careless attitude” but I don’t think this is a fair characterization. There are real tradeoffs to be made here about how to use marginal attention; they may be offsetting and just not talking about it, or deciding that it’s not going to make enough difference in the short run, but regardless I think you have insufficient evidence to conclude that their attitude is wrong.
(I personally offset all my CO2 with Wren and think for at least 5 minutes about each plane flight I decide to take to decide if it is worth it; but have never written about this till now, and would have no reason to bother writing it down.)
I personally offset all my CO2 with Wren
And yet I highly doubt that most EA do that. You say that carbon is offsetable but it’s still a vigorous debate. The measures we take to offset the said carbone often won’t remove carbon before years, if not centuries.
For someone who goes to a conference, how can they really measure the trade-offs? meeting one person who helps them get a EA job with 10 other persons from other contexts? It sounds hypocritical. Truth is, it’s hard to calculate truthfully the impact you’re having at these conferences because the results take years; however, the carbon is spent. Here. Now. And seeing global warming as a ‘marginal’ is a grave error to make IMO.
These folks justify their highly carbonate cost of living by saying they make impact elsewhere,but they can’t really calculate it.
All this doesn’t make my post less relevant : 1) we need to talk about it more and have some kind of pledge/be transparent about it 2) we need to do something about this carelesness because of lack of accountability.
Here, “marginal” means “on the margin”—would it be better for me to have spent a certain amount of attention on this issue or a different issue? The word can mean something “of little importance” in other contexts, though.
I share your general skepticism about offsets—it is possible, but you have to be really careful the offset is actually counterfactual (e.g., that it results in the creation of a good thing that wouldn’t have happened but for you paying the offset). Don’t know about Wren specifically.