There are also important considerations about the risk that rainforest preservation efforts might indirectly increase suffering.
Many in the effective altruism community believe that a large proportion of wild animals, especially invertebrates and other r-selected species, have net negative lives. Recently, this was the conclusion of a recent report by charity entrepreneurship. If you believe that there is a non-trivial chance that these animals can suffer or have morally relevant experiences, then the short- and medium-term effect of rainforest protection might be a counterfactual increase in wild animal suffering (see here for Brian Tomasik’s discussion of a related question).
More widely, encouraging concern for habitat protection might encourage people to value non-sentient entities even where the interests of these non-sentient entities conflict with the direct interests of individual animals. In general, this seems to be a step in the wrong direction if you agree that moral circle expansion is desirable. This might encourage the likelihood of future dystopian scenarios which involve astronomical levels of suffering.
In a sense, by promoting environmentalism via conservation, you might be reducing the chance of a global catastrophe via climat change but increasing the chance of S risk.
Good points. I mentioned Cool Earth specifically here, with a tentative calculation suggesting that even if greenhouse-gas emissions increase wild-animal populations (and it’s not clear that they do), preserving rainforest to sequester CO2 probably increases wild-animal populations even more.
There are also important considerations about the risk that rainforest preservation efforts might indirectly increase suffering.
Many in the effective altruism community believe that a large proportion of wild animals, especially invertebrates and other r-selected species, have net negative lives. Recently, this was the conclusion of a recent report by charity entrepreneurship. If you believe that there is a non-trivial chance that these animals can suffer or have morally relevant experiences, then the short- and medium-term effect of rainforest protection might be a counterfactual increase in wild animal suffering (see here for Brian Tomasik’s discussion of a related question).
More widely, encouraging concern for habitat protection might encourage people to value non-sentient entities even where the interests of these non-sentient entities conflict with the direct interests of individual animals. In general, this seems to be a step in the wrong direction if you agree that moral circle expansion is desirable. This might encourage the likelihood of future dystopian scenarios which involve astronomical levels of suffering.
In a sense, by promoting environmentalism via conservation, you might be reducing the chance of a global catastrophe via climat change but increasing the chance of S risk.
Good points. I mentioned Cool Earth specifically here, with a tentative calculation suggesting that even if greenhouse-gas emissions increase wild-animal populations (and it’s not clear that they do), preserving rainforest to sequester CO2 probably increases wild-animal populations even more.