As others mentioned, crisis periods are pretty frequent: post 9-11 era+GFC, post-Soviet conflicts, the entire Cold War, WW2, the interwar years, WW1+Spanish Flu+rise of Communism, the Victorian colonial era etc.
As a climate activist, I disagree on climate action being hindered by EA. Combatting climate change has received hundreds of billions in funding, decades of advocacy and near-unanimous intergovernmental cooperation. It’s neglected on a macro scale, but on the radar of a lot of influential, competent and conscientious people. Plus, anecdotally, I find that many EAs are either heavily reducing their own carbon footprint, working on farmed animal welfare which does contribute to decarbonisation or themselves working directly in climate work and engaging with the EA community in other meaningful capacities.
My general sense is that your criticisms are valid, but sort of assuming “if EA had several orders of magnitude more influence, what problems might it cause when it influences mainstream discourse”. It’s theoretically sound but the uncertainty of projections so far out is hard to prove or disprove.
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis and good to hear your pserspective around EA and climate. I think my claim is that, aside from the debate around whether EA supports inaction on climate ful stop, the action it seems most predisposed towards (e.g. focus on emerging technologies etc) carries its own risks.
In response to your latter point, I think it’s fair around the uncertainty of projections. As per my first reply above, I would more claim that contribution to a potentially harmful worldview is itself a cause of concern, even if current levels of influence are relatively low. I hope this is helpful clarfication!
Aight some comments:
As others mentioned, crisis periods are pretty frequent: post 9-11 era+GFC, post-Soviet conflicts, the entire Cold War, WW2, the interwar years, WW1+Spanish Flu+rise of Communism, the Victorian colonial era etc.
As a climate activist, I disagree on climate action being hindered by EA. Combatting climate change has received hundreds of billions in funding, decades of advocacy and near-unanimous intergovernmental cooperation. It’s neglected on a macro scale, but on the radar of a lot of influential, competent and conscientious people. Plus, anecdotally, I find that many EAs are either heavily reducing their own carbon footprint, working on farmed animal welfare which does contribute to decarbonisation or themselves working directly in climate work and engaging with the EA community in other meaningful capacities.
My general sense is that your criticisms are valid, but sort of assuming “if EA had several orders of magnitude more influence, what problems might it cause when it influences mainstream discourse”. It’s theoretically sound but the uncertainty of projections so far out is hard to prove or disprove.
Thanks for the thoughtful analysis and good to hear your pserspective around EA and climate. I think my claim is that, aside from the debate around whether EA supports inaction on climate ful stop, the action it seems most predisposed towards (e.g. focus on emerging technologies etc) carries its own risks.
In response to your latter point, I think it’s fair around the uncertainty of projections. As per my first reply above, I would more claim that contribution to a potentially harmful worldview is itself a cause of concern, even if current levels of influence are relatively low. I hope this is helpful clarfication!