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This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
This post presents the executive summary from Giving What We Can’s impact evaluation for 2025. At the end of this post we share links to more information, including the full report and...
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I don't think approaching this as 'why not to pursue a path' is helpful. I think it's more about helping people be aware of things they may not know so they can make an educated decision. That decision may then be 'it's not for me'. Think of the numbers showing how few people become professional athletes. The framing isn't 'don't do it because you won't make it'. It's 'few people make it, decide in full knowledge.'
"Decide in full knowledge"; I think that's exactly what I was aiming for, thank you.
My impression (and maybe I just haven't seen the articles) is that there is more focus on "these are the traits of people who have done well in this path" and something along these lines would attempt to balance that.
I may also be biased as I have a lot of interests, and narrowing down feels much better than adding more options to my plate.