I feel as though there’s a bit of a disconnect between the title and the claim being made in the paper. I don’t think it’s right to characterize climate action as being solely motivated by the risk of human extinction. If it were, then this and other EA arguments against climate focus would be accurate. But if you reframe climate change as “just” a catastrophic event that will cause the tens or hundreds of million deaths, then I don’t know that any of the arguments in this essay would actually apply (except that climate change is not neglected, which I accept).
By analogy, imagine if this was an essay titled “The Threat of a Pandemic is Exaggerated” and in the essay you argued that a global pandemic probably wouldn’t wipe out the human race, so we shouldn’t focus on it. (I know you mention that that’s wrong but for the sake of argument assume it’s right.) That would be wrong, because unless you are the most fanatical longtermist, the bar for focusing on a cause isn’t literally that it should prevent human extinction or bust. Some people who work to prevent pandemics believe that they could literally cause extinction, but you don’t have to believe that in order to believe that we should work to prevent pandemics.
In fact, it’s probably more productive to compare climate change to other global health and wellbeing (“neartermist”) causes. Consider the record storm season in North America in 2021, or the unprecedented heatwaves in India this summer, and it becomes much more sensible to think of climate as a very current issue and not something that only has merit as an x-risk.
My intention was to evaluate climate change as an x-risk, but I see what you mean about it being much more than that. I think the essay will benefit from additional comments on instead treating it as a current issue.
I feel as though there’s a bit of a disconnect between the title and the claim being made in the paper. I don’t think it’s right to characterize climate action as being solely motivated by the risk of human extinction. If it were, then this and other EA arguments against climate focus would be accurate. But if you reframe climate change as “just” a catastrophic event that will cause the tens or hundreds of million deaths, then I don’t know that any of the arguments in this essay would actually apply (except that climate change is not neglected, which I accept).
By analogy, imagine if this was an essay titled “The Threat of a Pandemic is Exaggerated” and in the essay you argued that a global pandemic probably wouldn’t wipe out the human race, so we shouldn’t focus on it. (I know you mention that that’s wrong but for the sake of argument assume it’s right.) That would be wrong, because unless you are the most fanatical longtermist, the bar for focusing on a cause isn’t literally that it should prevent human extinction or bust. Some people who work to prevent pandemics believe that they could literally cause extinction, but you don’t have to believe that in order to believe that we should work to prevent pandemics.
In fact, it’s probably more productive to compare climate change to other global health and wellbeing (“neartermist”) causes. Consider the record storm season in North America in 2021, or the unprecedented heatwaves in India this summer, and it becomes much more sensible to think of climate as a very current issue and not something that only has merit as an x-risk.
Thank you for taking the time out to comment :)
My intention was to evaluate climate change as an x-risk, but I see what you mean about it being much more than that. I think the essay will benefit from additional comments on instead treating it as a current issue.