While I would love to see a more detailed investigation on this issue, my first impressions are that:
- Current EA material (80k, OpenPhil) seem adequate at explaining why climate change is usually not a big priority area inside the EA community, while being sufficiently didactic and approachable for most people.
- The material might not be sufficient for a specific group of people: people with experience working on climate change research, activism or public policy.
I'm particularly worried about that last point because I believe there's a lot of amazing talent currently working on climate change which have a greater fit for working in other causes.
In the same way, reaching activists or influencers working on climate change might be a highly effective way to reach similarly aligned groups of people.
Anecdotally, I've had climate activists ask me for introductory materials to EA after receiving conflicting information on it, and I would have loved to point out a specific resource better tailored to them.
Edit: Another point might be that we might emphasize too much on x-risk when talking about climate change. I feel like this does a disservice to many readers, especially considering that neglectedness seems like a more general counterargument for working in climate change.
How would EAs talk about climate change, if it were a weird niche issue that few people were working on and didn't have any political connotations? One can imagine that "catastrophic climate impacts due to carbon dioxide" would be another EA cause area that made normal people scratch their heads.
Giving a short description from that hypothetical world might be a good way to communicate why EAs worry less about climate in our actual world.
Thanks for the answer. Does this idea of looking at it in that hypothetical word framing have a related post somewhere?
unfortunately no, just idle musings. i would be interested in reading it, though.