We deliberately didn’t perform these because their primary goal is not emissions reduction, so we thought it might be misleading to include. If it helps, I can however tell you that I personally do allocate some of my monthly donations to GFI, but expect (95% confidence) that I would not do so if I felt that animals had no moral value.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. However, I disagree with the conclusion of not performing these evaluations for that reason (though I think that it might make it harder to analyze and give an accurate answer).
For example, if it turns that GFI is 7 times less effective then CATF, that might mean that GFI is an extremely good donation opportunity for someone who wants to support both animal welfare and climate change mitigation. If it turns out that GFI’s impact is 1000 times less effective then CATF, then the impact on climate change is negligible in donating to them.
Knowing the answer to this question could impact many people’s donation strategy, especially if they are uncertain about what are the most important causes and prefer a diverse portfolio (like me).
I sympathise with your interests, but one reason it might not be useful to do this calculation is that the causal chain of GFI to CO2-equiv GHG emissions is quite long, and so there are more points of uncertainty. This means your potential impact range could be many orders of magnitude wrong, and so making a claim of their impact within 1-2 orders of magnitude might be misleading.
I think that splitting donations across causes and areas is a good idea—philanthropy is morally and empirically uncertain (maybe even clueless), so I’d suggest splitting your donations between CATF and GFI. I’ve been thinking about EA for years and I’m still uncertain about the most important causes, and a diverse portfolio is my solution.
Alternatively, you could contact the GFI people, but I think even if you got their numbers, you’d end up with a chain of impact that is very long and uncertain.
I agree with your main argument, but I think that the current situation is that we have no estimate at all, and this is bad. We literally have no idea if GFI averts 1 ton CO2e at $0.01 or at $1000. I believe having some very rough estimates could be very useful, and not that hard to do.
Also, I completely agree that splitting donations is a very good idea, and I personally do it (and in particular donated to both CATF and GFI in the past).
We deliberately didn’t perform these because their primary goal is not emissions reduction, so we thought it might be misleading to include. If it helps, I can however tell you that I personally do allocate some of my monthly donations to GFI, but expect (95% confidence) that I would not do so if I felt that animals had no moral value.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. However, I disagree with the conclusion of not performing these evaluations for that reason (though I think that it might make it harder to analyze and give an accurate answer).
For example, if it turns that GFI is 7 times less effective then CATF, that might mean that GFI is an extremely good donation opportunity for someone who wants to support both animal welfare and climate change mitigation. If it turns out that GFI’s impact is 1000 times less effective then CATF, then the impact on climate change is negligible in donating to them.
Knowing the answer to this question could impact many people’s donation strategy, especially if they are uncertain about what are the most important causes and prefer a diverse portfolio (like me).
I sympathise with your interests, but one reason it might not be useful to do this calculation is that the causal chain of GFI to CO2-equiv GHG emissions is quite long, and so there are more points of uncertainty. This means your potential impact range could be many orders of magnitude wrong, and so making a claim of their impact within 1-2 orders of magnitude might be misleading.
I think that splitting donations across causes and areas is a good idea—philanthropy is morally and empirically uncertain (maybe even clueless), so I’d suggest splitting your donations between CATF and GFI. I’ve been thinking about EA for years and I’m still uncertain about the most important causes, and a diverse portfolio is my solution.
Alternatively, you could contact the GFI people, but I think even if you got their numbers, you’d end up with a chain of impact that is very long and uncertain.
I agree with your main argument, but I think that the current situation is that we have no estimate at all, and this is bad. We literally have no idea if GFI averts 1 ton CO2e at $0.01 or at $1000. I believe having some very rough estimates could be very useful, and not that hard to do.
Also, I completely agree that splitting donations is a very good idea, and I personally do it (and in particular donated to both CATF and GFI in the past).