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I’m an independent researcher working on EA topics (Global Priorities Research, Longtermism, Global Catastrophic Risks, and Economics).
Hauke Hillebrandt
Karma: 3,583
Growth and the case against randomista development
Let’s Fund: Better Science impact evaluation. Registered Reports now available in Nature
Critique of OpenPhil’s macroeconomic policy advocacy
[updated] Global development interventions are generally more effective than climate change interventions
Impact investing is only a good idea in specific circumstances
An evaluation of Mind Ease, an anti-anxiety app
Crowdfunding for Effective Climate Policy
Corporate Global Catastrophic Risks (C-GCRs)
The Bletchley Declaration on AI Safety
EA orgs are trying to fundraise ~$10m - $16m
Decreasing populism and improving democracy, evidence-based policy, and rationality
Announcing: “Lets-Fund.org: High-Impact Crowdfunding campaigns” & “Let’s Fund #1: A (small) scientific Revolution”
A generalized strategy of ‘mission hedging’: investing in ‘evil’ to do more good
I have not looked at this deeply, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but a quick scan makes me believe that this is very hyped.
Having skimmed the paper it seems the only thing the authors do and what is peer-reviewed is estimate earth’s theoretical maximum capacity for reforestation.
There are few problems:
1) Feasibility: “200 GtC is a technical potential assuming every hectare of forestland on earth is increased to 100% forest cover”
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1147190442145898496
“An assessment of the biophysical capacity for restoring global tree cover provides a necessary but insufficient foundation for evaluating where tree cover can be feasibly increased. The kinds of trees as well as how and where they are grown determine how and which people benefit. In some contexts, increasing tree cover can elevate fire risk, decrease water supplies, and cause crop damage by wildlife. Reforestation programs often favor single-species tree plantations over restoring native forest ecosystems. This approach can generate negative consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage (5), threaten food and land security, and exacerbate social inequities. How restored lands are governed determines how reforestation costs and benefits are distributed.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/24
There are no dollar signs or economic feasibility analysis in that paper. So the people who wrote it just cited some number that is not peer-reviewed and even if loosely based on previous numbers might not work at the scale.
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2) There seems to be no scientific consensus how much (or even if!) new trees are a GHG sink on net. Some legitimate papers even suggests that new trees could be a net GHG source. (the paper does not make any new contributions to this question and I think just assumes that trees absorb GHG).
For instance, see this recent paper in Nature communications:
a) “Limited capacity of tree growth to mitigate the global greenhouse effect under predicted warming” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10174-4
b) this recent paper in PNAS (top journal as well)
“On-going carbon uptake due to forest demography is large, but much smaller than previous influential estimates have suggested. Contrary to previous findings, these latest data sources indicate that the sink is predominantly in mid-high latitude, rather than tropical, forests.”
Let’s Fund: Impact of our $1M crowdfunded grant to the Center for Clean Energy Innovation
Cause area: Developmental Cognitive Neuroepidemiology
given the enormous stakes I think it would be a mistake for even donors and organisations who do value diversity as a terminal value to dedicate resources to this instead of focusing on their core mission. Nor do I think there are likely to be significant instrumental benefits.
I very strongly disagree.
At the very least, consider the instrumental benefits from avoiding the PR-risk of the community adopting your far-out view that we ought not value diversity at all. This seems like a legitimate risk for EA, as evidenced by your comment having more upvotes than the author of this thread.
However, my sense is that, despite problems with diversity in EA, this has been recognized, and the majority view is actually that diversity is important and needs to be improved (see for instance CEA’s stance on diversity).
Justifying potentially bad stuff with “the stakes of the work EA does” feels like a slippery slope and a bit fanatic. There should be principled reasons that holds true for all charities, the cost-benefit approach you use the second part of your comment is better. Related: this thread on whether it’s okay to work in the Tobacco industry.