Thanks, Dan & team, for that! interesting to see how your thinking evolves. As requested, here are some comments:
On funding and room for funding: 1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots 2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative 3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Other issues: 4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions 5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots I wouldn’t make assumptions about the funding of neglected tech advocates based on Big Green over-funding. (Just for reference, CATF is about 5-20x less than the Big Green groups and 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 of that budget is not focused on US).
To take the relative over-funding of Big Green as evidence of the over-funding of neglected tech advocates suggests that there are similar trends behind funding Big Green and neglected tech advocates but not grassroots.
Prima facie, it seems much more likely that someone switches from, say, Sierra Club to Sunrise rather than to CATF, as ideologically Sierra Club is much closer to Sunrise than CATF is. In addition, Big Green groups are much more similar to what you call outside groups / grassroots in that they have regional chapters etc. and that they have a broad name recognition (They also serve a similar function, namely building broad support for climate policy).
Roughly, the superficially interested climate donor (that doesn’t do a lot of research) seems more likely to decide between Sierra Club and Sunrise, not Sierra Club and CATF.
2. 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
“In addition, many organizations reported total revenues in 2019 that were about an order of magnitude lower than what the Big Greens reported.”
As discussed at length before, the funding landscape for Sunrise has fundamentally changed, rendering the arguments about neglectedness moot. Unless there is a special argument for other movements being more neglected, this seems the right assumption for those other organizations as well. I am surprised this argument is resurrected without new data after the prior discussion on this was pretty conclusive, namely that the data to make the neglectedness argument was outdated and that new data pointed in different directions.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
It’s probably true that, in absolute terms, climate grassroot movements could absorb more money than inside groups because you could always fund marginal grassroots activity in another location. But that, by itself, does not tell us anything informative about where to spend money as long as we assume that marginal returns to funding decline.
You write that you think it is likely that impact grows linearly with funding for grassroots, which seems very surprising and unlikely.
Essentially this would mean that there is no prioritization on the part of grassroots movements, such as first funding the most impactful actions (in organizational infrastructure, say) or, when funding marginal grassroots activity, that these orgs would not first prioritize regions where returns are higher. What’s the basis for this intuition?
It seems much more likely (a) given the large funding for grassroots, (b) the general over-funding of American electoral politics, (c) the mobilization of the entire Democratic party towards climate action and (d) the ability of existing grassroots movements to get national attention with protests that the marginal impact of additional grassroots spending is ~0, in which case the actual room for funding still exists but it not being funded is OK.
Misc:
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions I am not sure on which basis to group Rewiring America with CATF and Carbon180 under the bucket of advocates for neglected technologies that critically need more support.
Rewiring America, as far as I know, primarily works on accelerating the electrification of residential energy consumption in the US (where residential includes personal vehicles, not only heat and electricity). The technologies involved in this are quite mature, on a winning streak (electric cars, residential batteries, heat pumps, rooftop solar, etc.), and widely popular.
On the other hand, CATF in particular (and, to a lesser extent, Carbon180, given the recent boom in carbon removal interest) systematically work on the hardest parts of the decarbonization challenge such as industrial decarbonization (via their work on CCS and zero-carbon fuels), firm clean electricity (CCS, super-hot rock geothermal, advanced nuclear), and heavy-duty transport (zero-carbon fuels). These are key future emissions streams where it is unclear whether we will be able to decarbonize them in time to avoid the worst climate damages.
Speaking somewhat roughly, it’s pretty hard to imagine a future where the work of Rewiring America was critically important because accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was super important. It is, on the other hand, fairly easy to imagine worlds where we fail to get low-carbon cement at scale, low-carbon heavy duty transport (trucks, but also ships, aviation) at scale, seasonal storage is harder than we think and we really wish advanced nuclear / geothermal etc. would have succeeded, or where carbon removal solutions fail to reach maturity.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs Yes, agreed that now in the US is a pivotal time, though ~80% of the climate-relevant policy decisions until the mid-terms will probably have been made once the infrastructure bills have passed (or failed).
Given the time lag of recommendation > more money > more action of charity X, probably the most important context under which to evaluate new US recommendations is their expected performance in the post-midterm environment.
Except for if one believed there was a clear positive impact on the midterms, though IIRC your analysis indicated no such effect for Sunrise and it seems quite contested whether pushing candidates further to the respective parties’ extremes is helpful electorally.
Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful response, we really appreciate your engagement. Some quick responses to your points:
On funding and room for funding: 1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
You’re right that it’s a bit tough to place the Big Greens in a conceptual framework, because they do so many diverse activities. We place them more in the “insider” category since a lot of their activities for federal policy fall on the insider spectrum (lobbying, model bills, etc.) But you’re right that they do outsider activities too, so the categorization isn’t clear.
In any case, I don’t think getting the taxonomy right is so important. We still think that the big greens tend to have lot of funding, and we think in general the value of a marginal contribution (be it for insider or outsider) activities is likely not cost-effective. That’s not to mention what I think is the biggest problem with most of the Big Greens which is that they are not squarely focused on climate, which is enough to eliminate them in our criteria.
2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
We sometimes quote 2019 numbers because this is the last year that public 990s are available for most organizations, and in general these still allow meaningful order-of-magnitude comparisons. We are well aware that funding for certain orgs (such as Sunrise) have increased dramatically over the past couple of years, and are taking that into account in our analysis.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Totally agree that overall budget or room for funding is a blunt instrument against which to measure marginal impact. It’s just one input into a complicated prediction. As far as calculating the actual return of funding effective activism, we are actively working on this going forward, and are going to post more on our thinking relatively soon. But we don’t agree that the marginal impact is ~0.
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
We’re relatively early into our assessment of Rewiring America, so thanks for your thoughts on them. Certainly, we agree that RA is not working on neglected tech, and that the solutions that someone like CATF are working on are likely more important in expectation. But we do think that RA have come on the scene with an effective framing of some of the decarbonization challenge (“electrify everything”), and are pushing a suite of policies based around household electrification that have not received much attention until recently. I wouldn’t ex-ante conclude that “accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was [not] super important,” from a cost effectiveness perspective. Anyway, I don’t want to spend much time defending RA because we are just starting our analysis, but I think do think they are at least worthy of consideration. We’ll definitely take your view into account as we move forward.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
Yes, good point- I think there’s a lot of truth to this. As you say, there might be value in considering orgs that might change midterm outcomes (though we are restricted in political recommendations). And also, I think there’s some chance that some of the climate policy provisions fall to the 2022 legislative session, though I admit that’s probably not the most likely scenario.
I do think the timing issue is a bit tricky, and we’re trying to grapple exactly with the best perspective here. It can be hard to predict when the work of an advocacy organization will have impact, and I think there’s a lot of value in keeping strong organizations running and productive even when it’s not their political time to shine. Because otherwise they lose their chance to be influential when they face a welcoming political environment. Definitely something we are mulling, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Thanks, Dan & team, for that! interesting to see how your thinking evolves. As requested, here are some comments:
On funding and room for funding:
1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Other issues:
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
I wouldn’t make assumptions about the funding of neglected tech advocates based on Big Green over-funding. (Just for reference, CATF is about 5-20x less than the Big Green groups and 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 of that budget is not focused on US).
To take the relative over-funding of Big Green as evidence of the over-funding of neglected tech advocates suggests that there are similar trends behind funding Big Green and neglected tech advocates but not grassroots.
Prima facie, it seems much more likely that someone switches from, say, Sierra Club to Sunrise rather than to CATF, as ideologically Sierra Club is much closer to Sunrise than CATF is. In addition, Big Green groups are much more similar to what you call outside groups / grassroots in that they have regional chapters etc. and that they have a broad name recognition (They also serve a similar function, namely building broad support for climate policy).
Roughly, the superficially interested climate donor (that doesn’t do a lot of research) seems more likely to decide between Sierra Club and Sunrise, not Sierra Club and CATF.
2. 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
“In addition, many organizations reported total revenues in 2019 that were about an order of magnitude lower than what the Big Greens reported.”
As discussed at length before, the funding landscape for Sunrise has fundamentally changed, rendering the arguments about neglectedness moot. Unless there is a special argument for other movements being more neglected, this seems the right assumption for those other organizations as well. I am surprised this argument is resurrected without new data after the prior discussion on this was pretty conclusive, namely that the data to make the neglectedness argument was outdated and that new data pointed in different directions.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
It’s probably true that, in absolute terms, climate grassroot movements could absorb more money than inside groups because you could always fund marginal grassroots activity in another location. But that, by itself, does not tell us anything informative about where to spend money as long as we assume that marginal returns to funding decline.
You write that you think it is likely that impact grows linearly with funding for grassroots, which seems very surprising and unlikely.
Essentially this would mean that there is no prioritization on the part of grassroots movements, such as first funding the most impactful actions (in organizational infrastructure, say) or, when funding marginal grassroots activity, that these orgs would not first prioritize regions where returns are higher. What’s the basis for this intuition?
It seems much more likely (a) given the large funding for grassroots, (b) the general over-funding of American electoral politics, (c) the mobilization of the entire Democratic party towards climate action and (d) the ability of existing grassroots movements to get national attention with protests that the marginal impact of additional grassroots spending is ~0, in which case the actual room for funding still exists but it not being funded is OK.
Misc:
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
I am not sure on which basis to group Rewiring America with CATF and Carbon180 under the bucket of advocates for neglected technologies that critically need more support.
Rewiring America, as far as I know, primarily works on accelerating the electrification of residential energy consumption in the US (where residential includes personal vehicles, not only heat and electricity). The technologies involved in this are quite mature, on a winning streak (electric cars, residential batteries, heat pumps, rooftop solar, etc.), and widely popular.
On the other hand, CATF in particular (and, to a lesser extent, Carbon180, given the recent boom in carbon removal interest) systematically work on the hardest parts of the decarbonization challenge such as industrial decarbonization (via their work on CCS and zero-carbon fuels), firm clean electricity (CCS, super-hot rock geothermal, advanced nuclear), and heavy-duty transport (zero-carbon fuels). These are key future emissions streams where it is unclear whether we will be able to decarbonize them in time to avoid the worst climate damages.
Speaking somewhat roughly, it’s pretty hard to imagine a future where the work of Rewiring America was critically important because accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was super important. It is, on the other hand, fairly easy to imagine worlds where we fail to get low-carbon cement at scale, low-carbon heavy duty transport (trucks, but also ships, aviation) at scale, seasonal storage is harder than we think and we really wish advanced nuclear / geothermal etc. would have succeeded, or where carbon removal solutions fail to reach maturity.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
Yes, agreed that now in the US is a pivotal time, though ~80% of the climate-relevant policy decisions until the mid-terms will probably have been made once the infrastructure bills have passed (or failed).
Given the time lag of recommendation > more money > more action of charity X, probably the most important context under which to evaluate new US recommendations is their expected performance in the post-midterm environment.
Except for if one believed there was a clear positive impact on the midterms, though IIRC your analysis indicated no such effect for Sunrise and it seems quite contested whether pushing candidates further to the respective parties’ extremes is helpful electorally.
Hi Jackva,
Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful response, we really appreciate your engagement. Some quick responses to your points:
On funding and room for funding:
1. Big Green over-funding is not the right reference class for neglected issue advocates and probably more informative for grassroots
You’re right that it’s a bit tough to place the Big Greens in a conceptual framework, because they do so many diverse activities. We place them more in the “insider” category since a lot of their activities for federal policy fall on the insider spectrum (lobbying, model bills, etc.) But you’re right that they do outsider activities too, so the categorization isn’t clear.
In any case, I don’t think getting the taxonomy right is so important. We still think that the big greens tend to have lot of funding, and we think in general the value of a marginal contribution (be it for insider or outsider) activities is likely not cost-effective. That’s not to mention what I think is the biggest problem with most of the Big Greens which is that they are not squarely focused on climate, which is enough to eliminate them in our criteria.
2. As discussed, 2019 numbers for grassroots are not informative
We sometimes quote 2019 numbers because this is the last year that public 990s are available for most organizations, and in general these still allow meaningful order-of-magnitude comparisons. We are well aware that funding for certain orgs (such as Sunrise) have increased dramatically over the past couple of years, and are taking that into account in our analysis.
3. Room for funding is larger, but that is not indicative of marginal impact
Totally agree that overall budget or room for funding is a blunt instrument against which to measure marginal impact. It’s just one input into a complicated prediction. As far as calculating the actual return of funding effective activism, we are actively working on this going forward, and are going to post more on our thinking relatively soon. But we don’t agree that the marginal impact is ~0.
4. Rewiring America does not fit the bucket of working on high-impact neglected solutions
We’re relatively early into our assessment of Rewiring America, so thanks for your thoughts on them. Certainly, we agree that RA is not working on neglected tech, and that the solutions that someone like CATF are working on are likely more important in expectation. But we do think that RA have come on the scene with an effective framing of some of the decarbonization challenge (“electrify everything”), and are pushing a suite of policies based around household electrification that have not received much attention until recently. I wouldn’t ex-ante conclude that “accelerating already decarbonizing residential energy demand in the US was [not] super important,” from a cost effectiveness perspective. Anyway, I don’t want to spend much time defending RA because we are just starting our analysis, but I think do think they are at least worthy of consideration. We’ll definitely take your view into account as we move forward.
5. Given time-lag and policy developments, post-midterm seems the environment against which to evaluate new US recs
Yes, good point- I think there’s a lot of truth to this. As you say, there might be value in considering orgs that might change midterm outcomes (though we are restricted in political recommendations). And also, I think there’s some chance that some of the climate policy provisions fall to the 2022 legislative session, though I admit that’s probably not the most likely scenario.
I do think the timing issue is a bit tricky, and we’re trying to grapple exactly with the best perspective here. It can be hard to predict when the work of an advocacy organization will have impact, and I think there’s a lot of value in keeping strong organizations running and productive even when it’s not their political time to shine. Because otherwise they lose their chance to be influential when they face a welcoming political environment. Definitely something we are mulling, and I don’t think there’s an easy answer.
Thanks again for all the thoughts!