You’re absolutely right—generally, my agenda was probably a bit simpler than people might have supposed. This was not intended to be the last word on whether climate change or development interventions are always better. Rather it’s a starting point and “choose your own adventure” model to help prioritizing between a concrete climate and a concrete development charity.
Note that there are four parameters that drive the results of this analysis (the SCC, the income adjustment eta, the cost to avert CO2, and the effectiveness of global dev/health vs. cash). For the first two, there really is a lot more uncertainty, but for the latter two, it’s more clear. This makes the model actually valuable and with action guiding potential.
For instance, if you’re a small donor and can’t decide between GiveDirectly and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (or perhaps the Let’s Fund Clean Energy campaign that you cite), then, if you believe that CfRN really has a cost-effectiveness of $0.02 / tCO2e averted, in many scenarios, especially the realistic one around which there is most consensus, it will often beat unconditional cash-transfers, even if you believe that social cost of carbon is quite low.
However, CfRN does lobbying, not a scalable intervention that one could invest a lot of money in. So, in contrast, if you’re a billionaire and are looking to decide between global development and climate change as a cause area for your foundation, then perhaps global development might be a better bet.
You’re absolutely right—generally, my agenda was probably a bit simpler than people might have supposed. This was not intended to be the last word on whether climate change or development interventions are always better. Rather it’s a starting point and “choose your own adventure” model to help prioritizing between a concrete climate and a concrete development charity.
Note that there are four parameters that drive the results of this analysis (the SCC, the income adjustment eta, the cost to avert CO2, and the effectiveness of global dev/health vs. cash). For the first two, there really is a lot more uncertainty, but for the latter two, it’s more clear. This makes the model actually valuable and with action guiding potential.
For instance, if you’re a small donor and can’t decide between GiveDirectly and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (or perhaps the Let’s Fund Clean Energy campaign that you cite), then, if you believe that CfRN really has a cost-effectiveness of $0.02 / tCO2e averted, in many scenarios, especially the realistic one around which there is most consensus, it will often beat unconditional cash-transfers, even if you believe that social cost of carbon is quite low.
However, CfRN does lobbying, not a scalable intervention that one could invest a lot of money in. So, in contrast, if you’re a billionaire and are looking to decide between global development and climate change as a cause area for your foundation, then perhaps global development might be a better bet.