Are some SDGs more important than others? Revealed country priorities from four years of VNRs

The SDGs seem to me to be antithetical to effective altruism. The SDGs :

• Are in part 'kinky' development goals that place an arbitrary low bar on development goals, such as eradicating $1.90 per day poverty.
• Don't prioritise among competing goals, such as climate change, growth, and education.

EAs should be focused on the question of how governments can most cost-effectively increase social welfare (broadly conceived) in their own countries. If we do this, we will meet all of the arbitrary "low bar" goals anyway. For discussion of national development vs kinky development, see some of Lant Pritchett's blogs.

Those who focus on the climate SDG may enjoy interviews with renewable investors Jane Mendillo of Harvard's endowment and Reuben Munger as much as I did.

Pairing the two illustrates how rigorous investment firms like Munger's bring deal-structuring expertise that can fashion profitable investments in renewables that otherwise wouldn't attract profit-seeking capital like that of Harvard, Anthony Sabia's CDPQ, or Bernard Looney's BP (fourth link). The first link includes an interview with Mendillo and Sabia, which covers Harvard's investments in replanting trees - a result of a labor supply of motivated financiers whose expertise enables them to structure complex but socially valuable deals, so natural resources capital can flow toward reforestation instead of (say) oil projects in Alberta.

All to say that, 80K team's capacity allowing, it might be worth expanding the front-office finance career profile in link 3 to describe how finance careers could allow EAs to help fund climate or pandemic preparedness solutions at places like CDPQ, Harvard or In-Q-Tel, or to open their own shops like Munger did. Munger opened his $1B Vision Ridge fund (which he did at a concessionary salary versus his prior job as a value investor, but still at a healthy salary) in order to finance climate infrastructure that otherwise might not have come online absent his involvement.

1) Relevant Mendillo points (begins at 24:20): https://youtu.be/9XXJ-u-mFBs?t=1460

2) Fantastic Munger interview: https://capitalallocatorspodcast.com/2020/07/05/si9munger/

3) 80K profile on finance careers: https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/front-office-finance/

4) BP's announcement: https://nyti.ms/311p7cw

*Note: both Mendillo and Sabia left their roles in recent years. I expect their endowments' portfolios have not become less sustainable since they set high watermarks for sustainability