While I would love to see a more detailed investigation on this issue, my first impressions are that:
Current EA material (80k, OpenPhil) seem adequate at explaining why climate change is usually not a big priority area inside the EA community, while being sufficiently didactic and approachable for most people.
The material might not be sufficient for a specific group of people: people with experience working on climate change research, activism or public policy.
I’m particularly worried about that last point because I believe there’s a lot of amazing talent currently working on climate change which have a greater fit for working in other causes.
In the same way, reaching activists or influencers working on climate change might be a highly effective way to reach similarly aligned groups of people.
Anecdotally, I’ve had climate activists ask me for introductory materials to EA after receiving conflicting information on it, and I would have loved to point out a specific resource better tailored to them.
Edit: Another point might be that we might emphasize too much on x-risk when talking about climate change. I feel like this does a disservice to many readers, especially considering that neglectedness seems like a more general counterargument for working in climate change.
I appreciate the clarification and this kind of detail (“people with experience working on climate change research, activism or public policy” as opposed to others).
Based on this thread, I think we’d be looking for a document that meets the following criteria:
Extends/Summarises current EA material on climate change so that it’s clear that EA has made serious attempts to assess it.
A nuanced explanation for the ITN framework, explaining how much of the work on climate change is not-neglected, and which observations might justify working on climate change over other cause areas.
Some description of other EA cause areas and links to similar reasoning which may explain why they are prioritised by some EAs.
Such a document should also be simple enough to be linked as introductory material to someone not familiar with EA. It would also be valuable to test such a document/set of arguments on some climate activists or even iterate based on their feedback in order to be more effective.
I’m definitely not the person to write this, but I could ask around a few places to see if anyone is keen to work on it. It sounds like our prior is that this is likely enough to be valuable, and simple enough to attempt, that it’s worth a shot.
Another thought that came to mind when thinking about this, is whether we should emphasize more on the possibility of a good fit arising from some form of tipping-point analysis.
This is based on the criticisms made by Antonin Broi on the inadequacy of the ITN framework for analyzing opportunities for systemic change, considering the case where there might not be decreasing marginal returns. This can be solved by putting aside neglectedness and instead thinking of tractability as a general function (see here).
What this could translate to in terms of advice is emphasizing that climate change could be a good fit when people are well positioned to exert a crucial (close to tipping point) influence on policy change.
While I would love to see a more detailed investigation on this issue, my first impressions are that:
Current EA material (80k, OpenPhil) seem adequate at explaining why climate change is usually not a big priority area inside the EA community, while being sufficiently didactic and approachable for most people.
The material might not be sufficient for a specific group of people: people with experience working on climate change research, activism or public policy.
I’m particularly worried about that last point because I believe there’s a lot of amazing talent currently working on climate change which have a greater fit for working in other causes.
In the same way, reaching activists or influencers working on climate change might be a highly effective way to reach similarly aligned groups of people.
Anecdotally, I’ve had climate activists ask me for introductory materials to EA after receiving conflicting information on it, and I would have loved to point out a specific resource better tailored to them.
Edit: Another point might be that we might emphasize too much on x-risk when talking about climate change. I feel like this does a disservice to many readers, especially considering that neglectedness seems like a more general counterargument for working in climate change.
Thanks Agustin,
I appreciate the clarification and this kind of detail (“people with experience working on climate change research, activism or public policy” as opposed to others).
Based on this thread, I think we’d be looking for a document that meets the following criteria:
Extends/Summarises current EA material on climate change so that it’s clear that EA has made serious attempts to assess it.
A nuanced explanation for the ITN framework, explaining how much of the work on climate change is not-neglected, and which observations might justify working on climate change over other cause areas.
Some description of other EA cause areas and links to similar reasoning which may explain why they are prioritised by some EAs.
Such a document should also be simple enough to be linked as introductory material to someone not familiar with EA. It would also be valuable to test such a document/set of arguments on some climate activists or even iterate based on their feedback in order to be more effective.
I’m definitely not the person to write this, but I could ask around a few places to see if anyone is keen to work on it. It sounds like our prior is that this is likely enough to be valuable, and simple enough to attempt, that it’s worth a shot.
I agree with everything here.
Another thought that came to mind when thinking about this, is whether we should emphasize more on the possibility of a good fit arising from some form of tipping-point analysis.
This is based on the criticisms made by Antonin Broi on the inadequacy of the ITN framework for analyzing opportunities for systemic change, considering the case where there might not be decreasing marginal returns. This can be solved by putting aside neglectedness and instead thinking of tractability as a general function (see here).
What this could translate to in terms of advice is emphasizing that climate change could be a good fit when people are well positioned to exert a crucial (close to tipping point) influence on policy change.