Quick takes

One happy news for the world - Poland just banned fur farming. The legislative battle is over, the president of the country signed the bill, which is the last chapter of the process.

Hey folks! I wanted to share a quick update on fundraising for the Center for Wild Animal Welfare (CWAW), as the year draws to a close, and as people consider finalising their end-of-year giving.  Our original forum post, announcing the launch of the Center and setting out the giving opportunity, is here.  We’ve had a great response, and have successfully raised our core Year 1 budget - whoop! The $60,000 1:1 donor match has been fully used up, so further donations to CWAW won’t be matched.  We are still gladly accepting donations, which will be used for ‘stretch’ items in CWAW’s budget - things such as public polling and focus groups to inform comms and policy development, contracting experts for advice on specific policy areas, subscriptions for parliamentary and media monitoring, joining professional and policy networks, running events such as policy report launches, improving our website, and expanding our capacity for ‘mainstream’ fundraising. We think that these items offer substantial value for money at the margin.   If you’d like to support our mission, it’s super easy to donate, and there are a variety of tax-efficient giving options (for various countries). Please see the original forum post for full details.  If you’re considering making an end-of-year gift, and have any questions - whether to help you weigh up the strength of CWAW as a giving opportunity, or on logistics - please feel free to reach out to Ben and I at team@wildanimalwelfare.org.  I’m also delighted to share that we will be launching a newsletter to keep people up to date about CWAW’s work. Whether you’re a donor or not, if you’d like to receive this, please do sign up here.  Cheers, and happy new year! 

Indoor tanning is really bad for people's health; it significantly increases one's risk of getting skin cancer.[1] Many countries already outlaw minors from visiting indoor tanning salons. However, surprisingly, there are only two countries, Australia and Brazil, that have banned indoor tanning for adults, too. I think that doing policy advocacy for a complete ban on indoor tanning in countries around the world has the potential to be a highly cost-effective global health intervention. Indoor tanning ban policy advocacy seems to check all three boxes of the ITN framework: it is highly neglected; it affects many people (indoor tanning is surprisingly popular: over 10 percent of adults around the world have tanned indoors[2]), and thus has the potential to have a big impact; and also, I think it could be quite tractable (passing laws is never easy, but is should be doable, because the indoor tanning lobby appears to be much less powerful than, say, the tobacco or alcohol lobbies). ---------------------------------------- 1. https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/skin-cancer/surprising-facts-about-indoor-tanning ↩︎ 2. https://www.aad.org/media/stats-indoor-tanning ↩︎

Potential opportunity to influence the World Bank away from financing factory farms: The UK Parliament is currently holding an open consultation on the future of UK aid and development assistance, closing on November 14, 2025. It includes the question, "Where is reform needed in multilateral agencies and development banks the UK is a member of, and funds?". This would include the World Bank, which finances factory farms,[1][2] so could this consultation be a way to push it away from doing that, via the UK government?  Are any organisations planning on submitting responses? If so, should there be an effort to co-ordinate more responses on this? 1. ^  "Why the World Bank Must Stop Funding Factory Farms", 30 Apr 2024 https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/why-the-world-bank-must-stop-funding-factory-farms/  2. ^ "The World Bank has a factory-farm climate problem", 20 Nov 2024 https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/world-bank-development-banks-factory-farm-climate-industrial-agriculture/ 

AI governance could be much more relevant in the EU, if the EU was willing to regulate ASML. Tell ASML they can only service compliant semiconductor foundries, where a "compliant semicondunctor foundry" is defined as a foundry which only allows its chips to be used by compliant AI companies. I think this is a really promising path for slower, more responsible AI development globally. The EU is known for its cautious approach to regulation. Many EAs believe that a cautious, risk-averse approach to AI development is appropriate. Yet EU regulations are often viewed as less important, since major AI firms are mostly outside the EU. However, ASML is located in the EU, and serves as a chokepoint for the entire AI industry. Regulating ASML addresses the standard complaint that "AI firms will simply relocate to the most permissive jurisdiction". Advocating this path could be a high-leverage way to make global AI development more responsible without the need for an international treaty.

Update (January 28): Marco Rubio has now issued a temporary waiver for "humanitarian programs that provide life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance."[1] PEPFAR's funding was recently paused as a result of the recent executive order on foreign aid.[2] (It was previously reauthorized until March 25, 2025.[3]) If not exempted, this would pause PEPFAR's work for three months, effective immediately. Marco Rubio has issued waivers for some forms of aid, including emergency food aid, and has the authority to issue a similar waiver for PEPFAR, allowing it to resume work immediately.[4] Rubio has previously expressed (relatively generic) positive sentiments about PEPFAR on Twitter,[5] and I don't have specific reason to think he's opposed to PEPFAR, as opposed to simply not caring strongly enough to give it a waiver without anyone encouraging him to. I think it is worth considering calling your representatives to suggest that they encourage Rubio to give PEPFAR a waiver, similarly to the waiver he provided to programs giving emergency food aid. I have a lot of uncertainty here — in particular, I'm not sure whether this is likely to persuade Rubio — but I think it is fairly unlikely to make things actively worse. I think the argument in favor of calling is likely stronger for people who are represented by Republicans in Congress; I expect Rubio would care much more about pressure from his own party than about pressure from the Democrats.   1. ^ https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-assistance-freeze-684ff394662986eb38e0c84d3e73350b 2. ^ My primary source for this quick take is Kelsey Piper's Twitter thread, as well as the Tweets it quotes and the articles it and the quoted Tweet link to. For a brief discussion of what PEPFAR is, see my previous Quick Take. 3. ^ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/pepfars-short-term-reauthorization-sets-an-uncertain-course-for-its-long-term-future/ 4. ^ htt

I sometimes think of this idea and haven't found anyone mentioning it with a quick AI search: a tax on suffering. EDIT: there's a paper on this but specific to animal welfare that was shared on the forum earlier this year. A suffering tax would function as a Pigouvian tax on negative externalities—specifically, the suffering imposed on sentient beings. The core logic: activities that cause suffering create costs not borne by the actor, so taxation internalizes these costs and incentivizes reduction. This differs from existing approaches (animal welfare regulations, meat taxes) by: * Making suffering itself the tax base rather than proxies like carbon emissions or product type * Creating a unified framework across different contexts (factory farming, research, entertainment, etc.) * Explicitly quantifying and pricing suffering The main problems are measurement & administration. I would imagine an institute would be tasked with guidelines/a calculation model, which could become pretty complex. Actually administrating it would also be very hard, and there should be a threshold beneath which no tax is required because it wouldn't be worth the overhead. I would imagine that an initial version wouldn't right away be "full EA" taking into account invertebrates. It should start with a narrow scope, but with the infrastructure for moral circle expansion. It's obviously more a theoretical exercise than practical near-term, but here's a couple of considerations:  * it's hard to oppose: it's easier to say that carbon isn't important or animals don't suffer. It's harder to oppose direct taxation of suffering * it's relatively robust in the long-term: it can incorporate new scientific and philosophical insights on wild animal welfare, non-vertebrate sentience, digital sentience, etc. * it's scale sensitive * it focuses the discussion on what matters: who suffers how much? * It incentivizes the private sector to find out ways to reduce suffering

EU opportunities for early-career EAs: quick overview from someone who applied broadly I applied to several EU entry programmes to test the waters, and I wanted to share what worked, what didn’t, and what I'm still uncertain about, hoping to get some insights. Quick note: I'm a nurse, currently finishing a Master of Public Health, and trying to contribute as best I can to reducing biological risks. My specialisation is in Governance and Leadership in European Public Health, which explains my interest in EU career paths. I don’t necessarily think the EU is the best option for everyone. I just happen to be exploring it seriously at the moment and wanted to share what I’ve learned in case it’s useful to others. ⌨️ What I applied to & how it went * Blue Book traineeship – got it (starting October at HERA.04, Emergency Office of DG HERA) * European Committee of the Regions traineeship – rejected in pre-selection * European Economic & Social Committee traineeship – same * Eurofound traineeship – no response * EMA traineeship (2 applications: Training Content and Vaccine Outreach) – no response * Center for Democracy & Technology internship – no response * Schuman traineeship (Parliament) – no response * EFSA traineeship – interview but no feedback (I indicated HERA preference, so not surprised) If anyone needed a reminder: rejection is normal and to be expected, not a sign of your inadequacy. It only takes one “yes.” 📄 Key EA Forum posts that informed and inspired me * “EAs interested in EU policy: Consider applying for the European Commission’s Blue Book Traineeship” * “What I learned from a week in the EU policy bubble” – excellent perspective on the EU policymaking environment 🔍 Where to find EU traineeships All together here: 🔗 https://eu-careers.europa.eu/en/job-opportunities/traineeships?institution=All Includes Blue Book, Schuman, and agency-specific roles (EMA, EFSA, ECDC...). Traineeships are just traineeships: don’t underestimate what