I’d like to see more information from the EA community about which organizations are most effective at addressing environmental harm, and at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in particular. More generally, I’d like to see more material from the EA community about which organizations or approaches are most effective in the category in which they fall.
Many EA supporters doubtless accept a broadly utilitarian ethical framework, according to which all activities can be ranked in order of their effect on aggregate welfare. I think the notion of aggregate welfare is incoherent. For that reason, I’m not interested in anyone’s opinion about whether reducing CO2 emissions is as cost-effective as saving children from malaria, or whether enabling people to buy better roofs is as cost-effective as reducing the risk of an intelligence explosion in AI.
When I decide that I want to reduce CO2 emissions, however, I would like to know which organizations are reducing emissions the most per dollar. That is a comparison that makes sense! If I am interested in helping to distribute malaria nets, I would like to have some sense of what impact my donation is likely to have. I suspect that there are a lot of people like me out there: not interested in ranking the importance of possible altruistic goals, but interested in information about how to pursue a given altruistic goal effectively.
Level of involvement: I have donated to GiveWell-endorsed charities for several years, though not at the level Peter Singer would recommend. I would not identify myself as a member of the EA movement.
Anonymous #36: