Peter Horowitz: Changing Climate Around Climate Change

In attempting to do the most good, effective altruists need to be exceptionally self aware. Aside from researching the efficacy of certain malaria combatance programs or philosophizing the moral value of an insect’s life, the effective altruist must do all she can not to alienate those who are not fully convinced participants in the movement. EA organizations are well aware of this requirement — changing the world is exceptionally difficult without sufficient manpower and public support. Effective altruism has a PR problem and the best way to solve it is by meeting people where they are, at the issues they care about.

For an organization devoted to saving and inspiring the world, EA turns many people away with counterproductive rhetoric around climate change. Although there is quite a bit of dissent within the community, EA’s lack of support for an issue that many feel is the most tangible threat to humanity does not go unnoticed. As a whole, we have neglected the reality that a prolonged climate crisis has the potential to catalyze numerous x-risk scenarios that are already widely accepted within the EA community. We stand to be far more effective in our mission if we rhetorically and ideologically alter our approach to climate activism. It is time that we adopt the climate crisis as a central focus area.

Considering the intersectional risks within the climate crisis, effective altruists needn’t abandon any of their existing cause areas in concerning themselves with the climate. Take animal welfare and factory farming, a cause area anchored in EA’s top four established objectives. Climate change is considered the primary driver of the anthropocene, the current mass extinctionresulting from global human domination. Biodiversity has decreased dramatically in the last fifty years and evolving climate patterns put between a third and a half of all known species at risk of extinction (not to mention the many thousands of unknown species). Furthermore, perhaps the most prevalent figures in the fight against factory farming are climate activists. Considering factory farming directly causes deforestation and unsustainable methane emissions, climate activists and animal welfarists can easily find common ground.

Another area of overlap is human conflict in response to migration and resource scarcity. Effective altruists name nuclear war as one of the most plausible x-risk scenarios. In an already unstable geopolitical environment, it takes one terrible drought in an underprepared area for governments to get desperate. Similarly, conflict arising from mass migration is an equally likely scenario. The effects of climate change stand to displace billions of people depending on drought patterns, storm severity, and rising sea levels. Melting permafrost in the tundras of northern Canada and Russia could contain ancient pathogens that modern medicine is ill equipped to oppose. Pandemics are yet another recognized x-risk that a continuous climate crisis could directly cause. From China expertise to global poverty, the climate crisis intersects accepted cause areas in effective altruism.

The perceived distance between our movement and climate advocacy turns potential effective altruists away — it’s hard for most people to imagine a real life “Matrix” occurring before our planet becomes uninhabitable. Not to say that AI alignment or other abstract EA focus areas are unimportant, but we tend to shun the climate crisis for no good reason. We could promote an end to factory farming, migratory stability, and pathogen research in conjunction with fighting climate change, all the while securing thousands of bright, new minds in our organization. Effective altruism has a PR problem: changing the climate around climate change could help.