Soemano Zeijlmans

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 30, 2025, 4:11 PM

  7 points

  1 ∶ 2

  on: Soe­mano Zeijl­mans’s Quick takes

  Which interesting EA-related bluesky accounts do you know of?
  
  I’m not using Twitter anymore since it’s being used to promote hateful views, but Bluesky is quite a cool online space in my opinion.

  I’m making a list of Bluesky accounts of EA-related organisations and key people. If you’re active on Bluesky or some of your favourite EA orgs or key people are, please leave a comment with a link to their profile!

  I’ve also made an EA (GHD+AW+CC) Starter Pack in case you’re interested. Let me know who I should add! Effective Environmentalism also has a pack with effectiveness-oriented climate change accounts.
  
  Some accounts in no particular order:

  @effectiveenvironmentalism.org (my org)

  @hannahritchie.bsky.social

  @alexholst.bsky.social

  @vegardbeyer.bsky.social

  @jamesozden.bsky.social

  @rowanemslie.bksy.social

  @goodfoodinst.bsky.social

  @80000hours.bsky.social

  @ourworldindata.org

  @givinggreen.bsky.social

  @brucefriedrich.bsky.social

  @cleanaircatf.bsky.social

  @ayudaefectiva.bksy.social

  @givingwhatwecan.bsky.social

  @soemanozeijlmans.eu (that’s me)

Soe­mano Zeijl­mans’s Quick takes

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 30, 2025, 4:01 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: AI Au­dit on Costa Rica

  Are you based in Costa Rica? You should totally suggest giving a talk about this at the University for Peace (UPAZ) of the UN in Ciudad Colón! Let me know if you’d like an introduction.

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 29, 2025, 11:28 AM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Shakirat Bello ’s comment on: An­nounc­ing Ap­pli­ca­tions for the AIM Re­search Pro­gram April 2025

  Feel free to send me a direct message on the forum with some questions.

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 22, 2025, 1:28 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ways the world is get­ting bet­ter—dis­cus­sion thread

  Even though the Trump presidency denies the consensus on and importance of climate change, there could still be ways to make progress: https://​​effectiveenvironmentalism.substack.com/​​p/​​can-we-make-climate-progress-under

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 20, 2025, 9:02 AM

  20 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Ways the world is get­ting bet­ter—dis­cus­sion thread

  2024 might have been a global breakout year for geothermal energy. Next generation technologies make it possible to drill for heat in places where this was previously impossible.

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 18, 2025, 3:34 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Karthik Tadepalli’s comment on: Call for sug­ges­tions: Cli­mate change char­ity ideas with strong co-benefits for hu­mans or animals

  Thank you Karthik, this looks really interesting!

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 17, 2025, 12:25 PM

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: An­nounc­ing Ap­pli­ca­tions for the AIM Re­search Pro­gram April 2025

  Hi, I did this program last year and I really enjoyed it. If anyone is considering applying but wants to ask some questions to a former participant to check whether it’s the right fit for them, feel free to send me an email or a forum message!

Call for sug­ges­tions: Cli­mate change char­ity ideas with strong co-benefits for hu­mans or animals

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 6, 2025, 6:18 PM

  5 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Vasco Grilo🔸’s comment on: Will a food car­bon tax lead to more an­i­mals be­ing slaugh­tered? A quan­ti­ta­tive model

  You’re right to point out the trade-off between low-carbon production and high welfare standards! Theoretically, it should be possible to adapt the model to weigh the animal welfare impacts on the extensive margin (=number of animals) by the intensity of the suffering of different animals, and to make intensity of suffering in turn a function of the carbon tax. That makes the whole model a bit more wonky but I think it’s important work that needs to be done.

  I would say taxing the negative effects on farmed animals based on the time they spend in pain, as assessed by the Welfare Footprint Project (WFP), is robustly beneficial.

  I agree! I think it will be quite difficult to implement this, though. Will policymakers like to implement a tax based on ‘suffering units’ with quite some uncertainty? I wonder if we can find a decent proxy that is easier for taxation.

• Soemano ZeijlmansJan 6, 2025, 6:09 PM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: geoffrey’s comment on: Will a food car­bon tax lead to more an­i­mals be­ing slaugh­tered? A quan­ti­ta­tive model

  Thank you for the kind words and the useful feedback!

  • My understanding is that calibration is picking numbers for parameters in a otherwise pre-defined model to make it match the real world, and what you’re describing I think of as estimation rather than calibration. I’ll add a footnote to make my use of the word a little clearer!

  • You’re right on the validity of the Bouyssou et al. (2024) paper. There are quite some differences in the measured elasticity estimates in the literature, unfortunately. I’m more worried about the own-price elasticity of supply, though, as the literature is much more scarce and old.

Will a food car­bon tax lead to more an­i­mals be­ing slaugh­tered? A quan­ti­ta­tive model

• Soemano ZeijlmansNov 19, 2024, 9:07 AM

  10 points

  0 ∶ 0

  on: Cli­mate Giv­ing as an Individual

  I think one factor that adds uncertainty to climate giving is that effective climate action requires systems change and innovation breakthroughs, and that you can’t simply put a price tag on these two because advocacy and innovation can fail. A more bednet-style approach to climate giving, such as forest protection and reforestation, seems promising because it offers high certainty and hardly any political opposition. Even then, these direct interventions have all kinds of uncertainty related to permanence (will the forest be cut down again?), additionality (would the forest have regrown naturally?), and leakage (will people just cut down different trees?). Unlike in global health and development, directly tackling emissions in one place can increase it somewhere else.

  Personally, I’ve come to terms with the idea that climate action is inherently uncertain. I can never pin down how my actions reduced global emissions because there’s a high chance of failure. But if we pool the probability of the efforts of thousands of people, we can collectively say that we very likely made a big dent in emissions because we can spread the risk over many donors, activists, and professionals.

  My intuition is the situation is different for larger organizations and donors who can afford to spread their bets and can do more to single-handedly galvanize an area of research or policy.

  How would you feel about donating to a high-impact grantmaking funds that spreads their climate bets and works to advance entire areas or research and policies? If you donate to the Founders Pledge climate fund or the Giving Green fund, for example, your donations are pooled with those of hundreds to thousands of other people who collectively can spread their bets and build new areas or research and policy.

  (PS. Setting up donations to funds instead of individual charities has some additional benefits. It helps to allocate funding to charities when they need it most, they can make grants to individual projects that don’t need continuous funding, and funds can change their recipients if other charities become more effective. See the EE website.)

• Soemano ZeijlmansNov 18, 2024, 10:00 AM

  0 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Trym Braathen🔸’s comment on: Effec­tive En­vi­ron­men­tal­ism has re-launched! (And we’re look­ing for fund­ing)

  Thank you Trym!

• Soemano ZeijlmansNov 14, 2024, 10:35 PM

  9 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: How would your pro­ject use ex­tra fund­ing? (Marginal Fund­ing Week 2024)

  We’re looking for seed funding for Effective Environmentalism, a field-building initiative.

  Link to stand-alone post: Effective Environmentalism has re-launched! (And we’re looking for funding)

  Effective Environmentalism is currently not funded, and we’d be able to use seed funding to devote time to spread EA ideas in the environmental movement and grow an effective environmentalism community!

  Name of the project: Effective Environmentalism

  My role: Co-director

  How we would use extra donations: We would use a seed grant to devote time to the project, particularly for community-building, providing introductory resources and information to environmental professionals, and outreach to the environmental community.

  Marginal funding: This would be our first funding since the re-launch.

Effec­tive En­vi­ron­men­tal­ism has re-launched! (And we’re look­ing for fund­ing)

• Soemano ZeijlmansOct 22, 2024, 9:59 AM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joel Tan🔸’s comment on: Weighted Fac­tor Models: Con­sider us­ing the ge­o­met­ric mean in­stead of the ar­ith­metic mean

  Good point on the error sensitivity. The geometric mean penalizes low scores more so it increases the probability of a false negative/​type II error: an alternative that should be prioritised is not prioritised.

Weighted Fac­tor Models: Con­sider us­ing the ge­o­met­ric mean in­stead of the ar­ith­metic mean

• Soemano ZeijlmansSep 14, 2024, 4:48 PM

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Said Bouziane’s comment on: What are your favourite videos to com­bat cli­mate anx­iety?

  Glad to hear!

  @DLMRBN 🔸 and I write a monthly newsletter on climate action. Feel free to subscribe if you wanna read more!

  https://​​effectiveenvironmentalism.substack.com/​​

• Soemano ZeijlmansSep 13, 2024, 1:36 PM

  1 point

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Seek­ing High-Im­pact Pro­ject Ideas for Con­sul­tancy Firm

  Try to see if your company’s expertise match with any of the recommended fields of work by Giving Green and High Impact Engineers! Especially this latter link is probably interesting for you and your colleagues.

  I think that @Ulrik Horn’s suggestion about how to adapt to worst-case climate scenarios is a good one, especially if you focus on places that are likely severely hit but don’t have adequate plans for adaptation yet.

  Some first ideas, going by the expertise of the company:

  • Chemical regulation (e.g., REACH) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) - Helping firms comply is probably not the most cost-effective, since compliance is mandatory, so they’ll just find another consultancy firm. Counterfactual is probably low here.

  • Circular economy. I’d say this really depends on which sector you’re trying to make circular. Something related to the circular use of rare earth materials for the energy transition seems promising, but this is still a broad theme.

  • Soil remediation. - Don’t know enough to comment.

  • Environmental permits and environmental impact assessments (effects on water, air quality, biodiversity, etc.). Similar to my first comment—if this is for compliance, firms will hire a consultant anyway, so the counterfactual here is lower. If you do EIAs or permitting for important new environmental infrastructure (e.g. hot rock geothermal), this may be different.

  • District heating networks. This is interesting, if you can contribute to quickly deploying geothermal energy around the world! Talk with the folks at Project Innerspace to know more.

  • Electricity grids. There’s a big potential here to electrify heavy industries that now rely on fossil fuels. The price of renewables has been dropping quite rapidly, but there’s quite a challenge in using renewables for hard-to-decarbonise processes like cement. Talk to or visit the websites of e.g. Future Cleantech Architects, Clean Air Task Force, and Industrious Labs to know more! I reckon energy storage and load shifting could be interesting ones to look at too! And maybe easier to get government funding for.

  • Sustainability and biodiversity consultancy—A little to broad to comment on.

  • Mobility solutions (design of roads, bridges, etc.) - no comment

  • Sewerage and water infrastructure—EU countries have a lot of their sewerage and water infrastructure in order already, so within the EU I don’t think this is the most cost-effective work on the margin. Some really innovative solutions could be interesting, perhaps. E.g. desalinisation?

  • Building and factory design. This seems promising. Lots of industrial processes are hard to get rid of (e.g. we’ll need cement, and worldwide demand is set to increase!) but there hasn’t been a lot of work on clean production in this area. Looking at cleaner production of cement, steel, or other industries seems promising, and factory design is probably a big part of that. Try to reach out to Industrious Labs!