However, this could also be true for cause areas, such as EAs updating towards being more concerned about climate change in the past few years, whilst some organisations were somewhat ahead of the curve relative to us (albeit potentially for different reasons to our interests in climate tail risks)
Is this true? My impression is that the EAs who study climate have gotten less concerned about extreme climate risks in the last few years, while “lay EAs” are less interested than before in working on climate risks.
I would sort of expect it to look like EA was becoming more concerned about climate change over time just because of movement growth and absorbing more marginal people causing a regression to the mean.
Good point - my main rationale behind saying this was the increased number of organisations / roles within EA working on climate in the past few years, for example:
Founders Pledge starting in climate work around 2020 and now with a team of 3-4 (roughly)
Giving Green being incubated in 2020, now with a team of 6
Forethought doing work on climate risk (via John Halstead mainly, I think)
Around 2018, I think there was comparatively much less activity in the EA climate world so I took this a sign that people must have updated in some way to thinking this was a more important problem to work on. A point that I didn’t mention which might be true for Open Phil / Rethink is that growing concern for how climate change will affect global health and development could be a big factor, rather than the extreme tail risk scenarios.
It could be that both are true, as EA grows and professionalises, it is able to put more organised resources to areas that EA as a whole is less concerned about.
Is this true? My impression is that the EAs who study climate have gotten less concerned about extreme climate risks in the last few years, while “lay EAs” are less interested than before in working on climate risks.
I would sort of expect it to look like EA was becoming more concerned about climate change over time just because of movement growth and absorbing more marginal people causing a regression to the mean.
Good point - my main rationale behind saying this was the increased number of organisations / roles within EA working on climate in the past few years, for example:
Founders Pledge starting in climate work around 2020 and now with a team of 3-4 (roughly)
Giving Green being incubated in 2020, now with a team of 6
Forethought doing work on climate risk (via John Halstead mainly, I think)
FHI now has someone working on climate
FTX Climate is now a thing
Rethink Priorities recently hired someone to work on climate within their global health and development team
Open Phil has introduced climate into their regranting challenge
Around 2018, I think there was comparatively much less activity in the EA climate world so I took this a sign that people must have updated in some way to thinking this was a more important problem to work on. A point that I didn’t mention which might be true for Open Phil / Rethink is that growing concern for how climate change will affect global health and development could be a big factor, rather than the extreme tail risk scenarios.
It could be that both are true, as EA grows and professionalises, it is able to put more organised resources to areas that EA as a whole is less concerned about.