Thanks for this it is useful. What is your estimate of the existential risk due to climate change? I obviously have it very low, so it would be useful to know where you are at on that. Could you explain what the main drivers of the risk are, from your point of view? Then we can get into the substance a bit more
I suppose the problem with that question from my perspective is I don’t think “existential risk due to X” really exists, as I explain in the talk. The number of percentage points it raises overall risk by, I would put climate change between <0.01% and 2%, and I would probably put overall risk at between 0.01% to 10% or something. But I’m not sure that I actually have much confidence in many approaches to xrisk quantification (as per Beard et al 2020a), even if it does make quantification easier.
Some of the main contributions to risk from climate, but note a number may also be unknown or unidentifiable:
Weakening local, regional and global governance
-Water and food insecurity
-Cascading economic impacts
-Conflict
-Displacement
-Biosphere integrity
-Responses increasing systemic risk
-Extreme Weather
-Latent Risk
Mostly these increase risk by:
-Increasing our vulnerability
-Multiple stressors coalescing into synchronous failure
-The major increase in systemic risk
-The responses we take
-Cascading effects leading to fast or slow collapse then extinction
Thanks for this it is useful. What is your estimate of the existential risk due to climate change? I obviously have it very low, so it would be useful to know where you are at on that. Could you explain what the main drivers of the risk are, from your point of view? Then we can get into the substance a bit more
I suppose the problem with that question from my perspective is I don’t think “existential risk due to X” really exists, as I explain in the talk. The number of percentage points it raises overall risk by, I would put climate change between <0.01% and 2%, and I would probably put overall risk at between 0.01% to 10% or something. But I’m not sure that I actually have much confidence in many approaches to xrisk quantification (as per Beard et al 2020a), even if it does make quantification easier. Some of the main contributions to risk from climate, but note a number may also be unknown or unidentifiable:
Weakening local, regional and global governance -Water and food insecurity -Cascading economic impacts -Conflict -Displacement -Biosphere integrity -Responses increasing systemic risk -Extreme Weather -Latent Risk
Mostly these increase risk by: -Increasing our vulnerability -Multiple stressors coalescing into synchronous failure -The major increase in systemic risk -The responses we take -Cascading effects leading to fast or slow collapse then extinction
Acting as a “risk factor”