I think it may be a mistake to look at fast progress in renewables and infer that countries will be able to meet their emissions targets without significant difficulty. Ramez Naam writes:
Our hardest climate problems – the ones that are both large and lack obvious solutions – are agriculture (and deforestation – its major side effect) and industry. Together these are 45% of global carbon emissions. And solutions are scarce.
Agriculture and land use account for 24% of all human emissions. That’s nearly as much as electricity, and twice as much all the world’s passenger cars combined.
Industry – steel, cement, and manufacturing – account for 21% of human emissions – one and a half times as much as all the world’s cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes combined.
Add industry, agriculture, and land use together and you have a very sticky, very difficult-to-improve 45% of carbon emissions.
By contrast, electricity and transportation are 39% of global emissions – nearly as big. The good news is that in electricity and transportation, we have momentum.
We do NOT have momentum in reducing the carbon emissions of industry and agriculture.
I think offering financial incentives specifically for red teaming makes sense. I tend to think red teaming is systematically undersupplied because people are concerned (often correctly in my experience with EA) that it will cost them social capital, and financial capital can offset that.
I’m a fan of the CEEALAR funding model—giving small amounts to dedicated EAs, with less scrutiny and less prestige distribution. IMO it is less incentive-distorting than more popular EA funding models.