Effective altruism and net-positive living
I have written an article on my own approach to effective altruism combined with the concept of net-positive systems. Net-positive systems are designed as living systems that not only consume resources, but produce useful resources for other living things to benefit from.
I experimented with a layman’s untrained approach towards simple ballpark calculations on what impact we can make on many different dimensions of our lives, from the carbon we produce, the water we consume, the waste we emit, and the animal cruelty we are part of.
I would appreciate constructive advice, especially if I have made a grave error in my calculations (note that these calculations are meant to be in the ballpark—I am aiming for accuracy, not precision).
Please read here: https://thinkmoult.com/effective-altruism-living-net-positive-life.html
This is really detailed and well-written, and this comment doesn’t do the essay justice, but I do want to make a few points:
This is a controversial statement, and I’d have liked to see more justification for it. It sounds as though you consider “biocapacity” to be a source of catastrophic risk to humanity—is that actually the case? If so, what does a “biocapacity catastrophe” look like? Are we doomed to run into dangerous shortages of key resources, even if we make the natural adjustments available to us (e.g. raising the price of scarce materials)? What are some experts’ “timelines” for when we might see catastrophic effects from overtaxing the planet?
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Ethical offsetting has a contentious history in EA; you may want to read that post and its comments, and see whether any critiques (there or on other posts you find) ring true to you.
For your plan in particular, donating to many different charities to offset resource use has complexity costs. You also risk not realizing when a charity’s impact gets much lower for some reason (e.g. low-hanging fruit dries up, the charity’s mission changes).
What are some advantages to this approach, compared to the more common “donate money to the one or two organizations I think are most effective, without regard for how they do or don’t compensate for things I’ve done”? Do you think it’s likely to be personally interesting/compelling to people who wouldn’t otherwise have EA inclinations?
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Regarding Cool Earth: you might find this critique of the organization interesting (it challenges some of the numbers you cited in your post).
Good morning @aarongertler!
Thank you very much for your comment.
For the statement about biocapacity, I observe that the ability for life to exist is a requirement for any altruistic behaviour to occur. Your critique about the timing is a valid point: without studying timelines, it is possible that we can target other issues first, and then later target our lavish resource consumption. That said, the topic of the article is about net-positive living :) I have reworded the sentence as follows:
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Personally, I believe ethical offsetting is not enough. It can be used as a “better than nothing” strategy, but I place a higher priority on lifestyle changes than financial contributions. Your critiques on complexity costs sound correct. I have updated the summary to add links that criticise cost-effectiveness calculations and ethical offsetting.
The largest advantage for me is that it challenges a common attitude that I encounter of “the world has many complex problems, and I am too small and unable to change the world”. I believe this approach of methodical quantification helps people digest large problems and challenges them to think where they can make an impact most. I emphasize the following at the end of my article:
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Thanks for the link! I have added it to the article. It is also worthwhile noting that the Cool Earth website donation system itself calculates tCO2eq for your donation, and their number is (from memory) about 5 times more than the 0.71 USD per tCO2eq that I mention in my article.