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Yes, sorry, offset was misleading--I think climate change charities might be the highest EV, though very hard to know.

Where To Offset Carbon Without Increasing Wild Animal Suffering?

May 141 min read 11

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Animal welfareCause prioritizationClimate changeEthics of personal consumptionWild animal welfare

Hey everyone, I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that most animals live bad lives, and therefore actions to increase wild animal populations are pretty bad. I'm still pretty opposed to climate change--though very uncertain--because in the long run I expect populations to rebound. However, warmer climates have more insects, and thus more overall suffering.

For this reason, I'm quite nervous about carbon offsets that offset carbon by preserving the Amazon--that's a recipe for many more insects! In light of this: does anyone know some effective ways to offset carbon that won't increase the number of insects directly? Thanks!

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abrahamroweMay 1410

This isn't an answer to your question, but I think the underlying assumption is way too strong given available evidence.

Taking for granted that bad experiences outweigh good ones in the wild (something I'm sympathetic to also, but which definitely has not clearly been demonstrated), I think having any kind of position on whether or not climate change increases or decreases wild animal welfare is pretty much impossible to say.

Why do you think insects will end up dominating in the calculus of animals impacted by climate change? What if most animals impacted by climate change are aquatic, and not terrestrial? This seems entirely plausible. I don't think we have any idea how climate change will impact aquatic animal populations in the very long run.
It might be in principle true that warmer climates = more insects, but what actually will end up impacting insect populations is going to be a lot more complicated: pace and nature of human development (e.g. changes in habitat destruction), weather variance over the year and across years, etc. Maybe species that are especially good at navigating high weather variance will do especially well for the next few centuries, and that causes local maxima that look very different than the theoretical effects.
It wouldn't surprise me if total land area by biome type is way more relevant to insect population than overall temperature. This again seems like a question where we know basically nothing about what the longterm impacts of climate change will be.

I guess my overall view is that having any kind of reasonable opinion on the impact of climate change on insect or other animal populations in the longrun, besides extremely weak priors, is basically impossible right now, and most assumptions we can make will end up being wrong in various ways.

I also think it doesn't follow that if we think suffering in nature outweighs positive experience, we should try to minimize the number of animals. What if it is more cost-effective to improve the lives of those animals? Especially given that we are at best incredibly uncertain if suffering outweighs positive experience, it seems clearly better to explore cost-effective ways to improve welfare over reducing populations, as those interventions will be more robust no matter the overall dominance of negative vs positive experiences in the wild.

Bentham's BulldogMay 144

I agree there's a very high degree of uncertainty. But I'd guess at maybe 58% odds that climate change will be bad in the long run. I'd imagine the aquatic impacts will largely rebound long term while the terrestrial ones will be long lasting. I agree there's high uncertianty, but sometimes it's worth acting on +ev actions even given loads of uncertainty.

abrahamroweMay 146

How did you get to 58%? That seems pretty precise so interested in the reasoning there.

Bentham's BulldogMay 143

Vibes! 60 felt too high, 55 too low!

Vasco Grilo🔸May 142

Thanks for the interesting discussion, Abraham and Matthew! I have coincidentally been thinking about this over the past few days.

I agree there's high uncertianty, but sometimes it's worth acting on +ev actions even given loads of uncertainty.

I agree. Uncertainty about whether wild animals have positive or negative lives should directionally update one towards supporting interventions which improve their lives, and away from ones which increase/decrease positive/negative animal-years. However, it could still be the case that one's best guess for the welfare per animal-year is sufficiently away from 0 for the latter interventions to be more cost-effective. I am not aware of any quantitative analysis arguing one way or the other.

CB🔸May 145

Very good question. Usually I tend to recommend Giving Green-recommended charities such as the Good Food Institute, but that doesn't seem to match your criteria.

But, if I can indulge in some self-promotion, we at the National Observatory on Insect Farming are working on identifying the limits of a new industry that tends to have significant climate impacts. In a recent study, insect meal has been shown to have 5 to 13 times the climate impact of soybean meal. There are also significant biodiversity concerns were genetically selected insects to escape.

Of course, we're new and haven't been vetted by Giving green or similar orgs, but I thought I'd share.

More detail on our work here (and you can contact me by MP for more detail) : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jb5aovXeAarw69hN7/insect-farming-new-media-coverage-on-the-hidden-challenges

Vasco Grilo🔸May 143

Hi Matthew,

Have you considered donating to the organisation you think has the highest marginal cost-effectiveness instead of offsetting your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions? You would increase welfare more.

Bentham's BulldogMay 154

Yes, sorry, offset was misleading--I think climate change charities might be the highest EV, though very hard to know.

Vasco Grilo🔸May 152

Got it; thanks. I was suspecting you might be thinking that, as lower temperature will tend to decreases the number of arthropods. I would like to run some calculations about that at some point.

S_AdiMay 151

Interesting question. Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies (CEERT) was recommended by Brian. This organisation focuses specifically on efficiency improvements and renewable energy, rather than habitat or biomass preservation. You can view more of his reasoning here . There are probably other effective charities out there that focuses on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Tim HuaMay 141

I think these "preserve trees" offsets might be somewhat fake to begin with? I've personally given to make sunsets (direct aerosol injection) and also Climateworks (direct carbon capture from the air and injecting it into groundwater/the rocks).