Existing climate giving is quite large, and it makes more sense to make that giving more effective than diverting EA resources to climate.
There is weak evidence that that the Giving Green Fund or Founder’s Pledge Climate Fund achieve $1-2 dollar/tCO2e mitigation. The interventions in these funds are based on poorly validated hypothetical expected value models—many closed/not shared, if based on models at all—and some bets have been particularly bad, as I discuss in this lengthy post. I cover issues with models from both organizations models in Part 8. There are wildly different (and weaker) evidentiary standards that GG and FP use compared to GiveWell in their effectiveness claims. In my estimation GG is improving, FP is not.
Other commenters have pointed out issues with the SCC calculation. I’ll further add that if you are going to include long term economic effects in the social cost of carbon, you need to do likewise for global health interventions when comparing. That was not done here as far as I can tell.
Two main critiques:
Existing climate giving is quite large, and it makes more sense to make that giving more effective than diverting EA resources to climate.
There is weak evidence that that the Giving Green Fund or Founder’s Pledge Climate Fund achieve $1-2 dollar/tCO2e mitigation. The interventions in these funds are based on poorly validated hypothetical expected value models—many closed/not shared, if based on models at all—and some bets have been particularly bad, as I discuss in this lengthy post. I cover issues with models from both organizations models in Part 8. There are wildly different (and weaker) evidentiary standards that GG and FP use compared to GiveWell in their effectiveness claims. In my estimation GG is improving, FP is not.
Other commenters have pointed out issues with the SCC calculation. I’ll further add that if you are going to include long term economic effects in the social cost of carbon, you need to do likewise for global health interventions when comparing. That was not done here as far as I can tell.