ACE charities are also super cost-effective (15 chickens spared per dollar or so) so if you can hold yourself to a deal like “I’m gonna eat steak tonight but promise to donate $1 to The Humane League after”, you just did a lot more good than bad, at least in expected value.
Deliberately offsetting a harm through a “similar” opposite benefit means deliberately restricting that donation to a charity from a restricted subset of possible charities, and it may be less effective than the ones you’ve ruled out.
Isn’t this equivalent to “I am going to cause some suffering but promise to pay to educate someone else to not cause more suffering”?
Unlike carbon offsetting, animal suffering from factory farming is irreversible.
I agree that ACE charities are very cost-effective and I personally support them. But, the 15 chicken spared per dollar you quoted is not true. It is actually a rough estimate of −6 to +13 animals spared from industrial agriculture. Here is the donation impact estimate of the Human League according to ACE:
What do you get for your donation?
From an average $1,000 donation, THL would spend about $420 on corporate outreach to campaign for higher welfare policies. They would spend about $320 on grassroots outreach, including leafleting, supporting corporate campaigns, and humane education. THL would also spend about $130 on online ads, $100 on communications and social media, and about $30 on studies through Humane League Labs. Our rough estimate is that these activities combined would spare −6,000 to 13,000 animals from life in industrial agriculture.
ACE charities are also super cost-effective (15 chickens spared per dollar or so) so if you can hold yourself to a deal like “I’m gonna eat steak tonight but promise to donate $1 to The Humane League after”, you just did a lot more good than bad, at least in expected value.
Deliberately offsetting a harm through a “similar” opposite benefit means deliberately restricting that donation to a charity from a restricted subset of possible charities, and it may be less effective than the ones you’ve ruled out.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/Yix7BzSQLJ9TYaodG/ethical-offsetting-is-antithetical-to-ea
Offsetting could also justify murder, because there are life-saving charities.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/04/ethics-offsets/
Also related: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/eeBwfLfB3iQkpDhz6/at-what-cost-carnivory
Isn’t this equivalent to “I am going to cause some suffering but promise to pay to educate someone else to not cause more suffering”?
Unlike carbon offsetting, animal suffering from factory farming is irreversible.
I agree that ACE charities are very cost-effective and I personally support them. But, the 15 chicken spared per dollar you quoted is not true. It is actually a rough estimate of −6 to +13 animals spared from industrial agriculture. Here is the donation impact estimate of the Human League according to ACE:
What do you get for your donation?
From an average $1,000 donation, THL would spend about $420 on corporate outreach to campaign for higher welfare policies. They would spend about $320 on grassroots outreach, including leafleting, supporting corporate campaigns, and humane education. THL would also spend about $130 on online ads, $100 on communications and social media, and about $30 on studies through Humane League Labs. Our rough estimate is that these activities combined would spare −6,000 to 13,000 animals from life in industrial agriculture.
https://animalcharityevaluators.org/charity-review/the-humane-league/
Fair point. Also this model gives a very similar number too, if you take the median of the −6, 13 estimate (3.5).