Leonora_Camner
Bio
I'm deeply concerned about existential risks, particularly those posed by climate change. To address this, I founded ClimateSafe Villages (CSV), a nonprofit focused on building community-level resilience to the increasing impacts of global warming. CSV advocates for resilient infrastructure, regenerative agriculture, and other adaptations to help communities thrive amidst worsening conditions. I believe that alongside crucial emissions reduction efforts, we need proactive preparation to mitigate potentially catastrophic long-term climate risks.
I am also Executive Director of Democracy Without Elections, a sortition advocacy organization.
Previously, I was executive director of Abundant Housing LA, a part of the YIMBY movement, and an attorney, which informs my approach to this work. I'm excited to connect with other EAs thinking deeply about these issues and ensuring that our efforts are grounded in evidence and reason. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to discuss climate resilience, longtermism, or anything else!
How others can help me
- Share your insights on the long-term risks of climate change and the role of adaptation efforts alongside mitigation
- Connect me with others working on similar community resilience projects or studying these issues from a longtermist perspective
- Provide feedback on CSV's approach and suggest ways to make our work more robust and evidence-based
- Spread the word about CSV to anyone who might be interested in supporting or collaborating with us
- Let me know about any relevant resources, events, or discussions happening in the EA community
How I can help others
- Share insights from my work on CSV and our research into resilient infrastructure, regenerative agriculture, and community-level adaptation strategies
- Connect you with our network of experts in fields like climate science, engineering, and sustainable building
- Provide advice and resources for starting your own local climate resilience projects
- Collaborate on research, writing, or advocacy related to the long-term risks of climate change and the importance of adaptation
- Offer an on-the-ground perspective on implementing these ideas and building community support
- Discuss any other topics related to climate change, existential risk, longtermism, etc.
Posts 2
Comments4
Thank you for this very informative post on an important issue. I'm going to take some time to read through this a few times and absorb all of the information. As I wrote in my other post, I'm thinking a lot about the risk of GCRs due to climate change, so I'm looking forward enhancing my understanding about this.
In July 2022, Jeff Masters wrote an article (https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/07/the-future-of-global-catastrophic-risk-events-from-climate-change/) summarizing findings from a United Nations report on the increasing risks of global catastrophic risk (GCR) events due to climate change. The report defines GCRs as catastrophes that kill over 10 million people or cause over $10 trillion in damage. It warned that by increasingly pushing beyond safe planetary boundaries, human activity is boosting the odds of climate-related GCRs.
The article argued that societies are more vulnerable to sudden collapse when multiple environmental shocks occur, and that the combination of climate change impacts poses a serious risk of total societal collapse if we continue business as usual.
Although the article and report are from mid-2022, the scientific community has been messaging that climate change effects are increasing faster than models predicted. So I'm curious - what has the EA community been doing over the past year to understand, prepare for and mitigate these climate-related GCRs? Some questions I have:
- What new work has been done in EA on these risks since mid-2022, and what are the key open problems?
- How much intellectual priority and resources is the EA community putting towards climate GCRs compared to other GCRs? Has this changed in the past year, and is it enough given the magnitude of the risks? I see this as different than investing in interventions that address GHGs and warming.
- How can we ensure these risks are getting adequate attention?
I'm very interested to hear others' thoughts. While a lot of great climate-related work is happening in EA, I worry that climate GCRs remain relatively neglected compared to other GCRs.
Hello, I'm Leonora Camner, a founder of a new climate change adaptation organization called ClimateSafe Villages (CSV). Given the deeply concerning warnings from experts that we are not on track to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming, CSV aims to help communities build local resilience to the severe climate impacts we are likely to face in the coming decades. These communities are resilient not just to climate change, but other catastrophic risks as well.
Our work focuses on:
- Researching and modeling innovative, resilient building methods and materials
- Developing community-scale systems for water capture, storage and preservation
- Building regenerative food systems that are adaptable to extreme conditions
- Convening advisors across climate science, engineering, agriculture and other key areas
- Producing actionable guides to help people everywhere build climate resilience
By enabling communities to withstand extreme disasters, deadly heat, water scarcity, food shortages and other devastating climate impacts, I believe we can meaningfully reduce the overall level of risk humanity faces.
I'm very interested to connect with others working on climate and existential risks to explore potential collaborations and knowledge sharing. Please reach out or connect me with others!
Until the end of last year, I was the Executive Director of the YIMBY ("Yes in My Backyard") nonprofit Abundant Housing LA, which I grew from a volunteer effort to a staff of 10. I'm always happy to chat with others about this experience and share any relevant lessons learned. If helpful, I can write a post about this experience and my recommendations. I'm also an advocate for sortition (democracy by lottery) and would love to connect with others interested in this area.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to getting to know this community! You can learn more about CSV at ClimateSafeVillages.org.
Thank you again for this post. One thing that stuck out to me is that issue of focus on "sexy" risks, and not enough attention going to "unsexy" risks, which I see you noted includes climate change. My other post was questioning whether it's right that EA has so little emphasis on the GCR of climate change. Do you have insights on that? Do you think that EA should be more focused on the "unsexy" risks of climate change? What could be done to address this?