Climate change is neglected by EA

Abstract

This article argues that effective altruism (EA) currently neglects and undervalues climate change as a cause area. It identifies several key reasons for this neglect, including the difficulty of predicting the full impacts of climate change, a tendency within EA to focus on tail-risk scenarios (such as climate change leading to human extinction) rather than the more likely negative impacts of mainstream climate change, and a perceived incompatibility between EA’s emphasis on quantifiable interventions and the complex, multifaceted nature of climate change. This neglect of climate change, the article suggests, leads to a misrepresentation of the issue within EA, potentially discouraging individuals from working on this pressing problem and hindering the growth of EA as a movement. – AI-generated abstract.