I understand the desire to quantitatively measure impact, but from my experience working on impact measurement in climate projects and programs, I believe that much of this measurement is bullsh*t. I say this from the perspective of having really believed rigorous measurement was possible and would make climate decision-making better for a few years, until I realized most of it was smoke and mirrors (there are many reasons for this, including huge margins of error for carbon estimates, but also overambitious stated emissions reductions, poor accounting/reporting, and systemic problems like additionality and double counting). So I’m with Giving Green on this side.
I do think they should make clearer that they believe policy change is the most important place to donate. The science is clear that most fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground. That is the most important way to stop climate change, not offsetting. Offsets are, as mentioned, susceptible to the same large margins of error that can make their measurement almost meaningless (e.g. people do RCTs of clean cookstoves but neglect to notice that people don’t use them, or they use them IN ADDITION to the indoor fires they used to use). Offsets also create the dangerous illusion that we can continue to burn fossil fuels, so long as we purchase offsets elsewhere. The offset markets are flawed in many ways; they are NOT airtight.
Because it is so hard to measure impact and cost of a marginal output in advocacy and activism, in my opinion Giving Green should recommend donating to a portfolio of promising policy change and activism organizations. Thus I think Giving Green should focus on doing a more extensive search for policy and activism orgs, select 10-20 promising ones, and potentially create a fund that splits donations between those orgs. They should also branch out beyond organizations that have a proven track record to those that are potentially very high impact but do not measure their impact or have shiny websites. I’m talking indigenous land defenders who are physically blocking pipelines. They are doing much to stop fossil fuel extraction on their traditional territory and are overlooked by traditional funders. They are changing policy debates (see the resistance to Keystone XL pipeline).
I know this might be against EA’s general frames of thinking but if we spend all our time trying to figure out how to measure impact in climate policy, we might miss the opportunity to really affect change within the 10-year window we have to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Donating effectively will inherently have some risk of failure attached but we need to risk it because the climate emergency is that urgent and important.
I understand the desire to quantitatively measure impact, but from my experience working on impact measurement in climate projects and programs, I believe that much of this measurement is bullsh*t. I say this from the perspective of having really believed rigorous measurement was possible and would make climate decision-making better for a few years, until I realized most of it was smoke and mirrors (there are many reasons for this, including huge margins of error for carbon estimates, but also overambitious stated emissions reductions, poor accounting/reporting, and systemic problems like additionality and double counting). So I’m with Giving Green on this side.
I do think they should make clearer that they believe policy change is the most important place to donate. The science is clear that most fossil fuel reserves need to stay in the ground. That is the most important way to stop climate change, not offsetting. Offsets are, as mentioned, susceptible to the same large margins of error that can make their measurement almost meaningless (e.g. people do RCTs of clean cookstoves but neglect to notice that people don’t use them, or they use them IN ADDITION to the indoor fires they used to use). Offsets also create the dangerous illusion that we can continue to burn fossil fuels, so long as we purchase offsets elsewhere. The offset markets are flawed in many ways; they are NOT airtight.
Because it is so hard to measure impact and cost of a marginal output in advocacy and activism, in my opinion Giving Green should recommend donating to a portfolio of promising policy change and activism organizations. Thus I think Giving Green should focus on doing a more extensive search for policy and activism orgs, select 10-20 promising ones, and potentially create a fund that splits donations between those orgs. They should also branch out beyond organizations that have a proven track record to those that are potentially very high impact but do not measure their impact or have shiny websites. I’m talking indigenous land defenders who are physically blocking pipelines. They are doing much to stop fossil fuel extraction on their traditional territory and are overlooked by traditional funders. They are changing policy debates (see the resistance to Keystone XL pipeline).
I know this might be against EA’s general frames of thinking but if we spend all our time trying to figure out how to measure impact in climate policy, we might miss the opportunity to really affect change within the 10-year window we have to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Donating effectively will inherently have some risk of failure attached but we need to risk it because the climate emergency is that urgent and important.