[My views are my own, not my employer's. Thanks to Michael Dickens for reviewing this post prior to publication.]

[More discussion here]

Summary

Spreading ethical offsetting is antithetical to EA values because it encourages people to focus on negating harm they personally cause rather than doing as much good as possible. Also, the most favored reference class for the offsets is rather vague and arbitrary.

There are a few positive aspects of using ethical offsets, and situations in which advocating ethical offsets may be effective.

Definition

Ethical offsetting is the practice of undoing harms caused by one's activities through donations or other acts of altruism. Examples of ethical offsetting include purchasing carbon offsets to make up for one’s carbon emissions and donating to animal charities to offset animal product consumption. More explanation and examples are available in this article.

Against offsetting

I think ethical offsetting is antithetical to EA values, and have three main objections to it.

1) In practice, people doing ethical offsetting use vague and arbitrary reference classes.

2) It's not the most effectively altruistic thing to do.

3) It spreads suboptimal and non-consequentialist memes/norms about doing good.

1) The reference class people pick for ethical offsets is arbitrary.

For example, let's say I cause some harm by buying milk that came from a cow that was treated poorly, and I want to negate the harm. I have a bunch of options.

I cannot undo the exact harm done by my purchase once it's happened, but I could (try to) seek out that specific cow and try to do something nice for her, negating the harm I caused for that specific cow's utility calculus. I could donate some money to a charity that helps cows, negating my harmful effect on the total utility of cow-kind. I could donate some money to a charity that helps all farmed animals, negating my harmful effect on farmed animal-kind. Or I could donate to whatever charity I thought did the most good per dollar, negating my negative impact on the universe most cost-effectively but less directly.

People seem to settle on a sort of broad cause-area-level offsetting preference (e.g. donating to help farmed animals). While reference class seems intuitive, it's ultimately arbitrary*.

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ClaireZabel

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