Iām living in France. Learned about EA in 2018, found that great, digged a lot into the topic. The idea of āwhat in the world improves well-being or causes suffering the most, and what can we doā really influenced me a whole lotāespecially when mixed with meditation that allowed me to be more active in my life.
One of the most reliable thing I have found so far is helping animal charities : farmed animals are much more numerous than humans (and have much worse living conditions), and there absolutely is evidence that animal charities are getting some improvements (especially from The Humane League). I tried to donate a lot there.
Long-termism could also be important, but I think that weāll hit energy limits before getting to an extinction eventāI wrote an EA forum post for that here: https://āāforum.effectivealtruism.org/āāposts/āāwXzc75txE5hbHqYug/āāthe-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea
Interesting, thank you.
On the second point this reads like very optimistic (the way animals are treated in rich countries is just very bad). I agree that itās maybe easier to appeal to ethical values and develop alternatives now but itās hard to know if this will be enough to offset all the negative stuff associated by āmore power and money = easier to buy animal productsā. But I wonāt have much time to engage and itās not that important since we canāt change this part of the trajectory.