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This piece was first written on March 21, 2021, and first appeared on this site on March 18, 2022.

Climate Strategy 1: Government Collaboration

If we collaborated, China, the U.S., India, and Europe could engage in substantial climate emission regulation (e.g., by taxing carbon, using cap-and-trade systems, setting deadlines by which certain industries must be carbon neutral, building cleaner power generation facilities, putting carbon-capturing methods in place, etc.).

A large percent of pollution comes from these regions (more than 55%, it seems; see here and here).  That’s why getting these four regions on board is so critical.

Ideally, these four regions would work closely with each other, all jointly agreeing to the measures that need to be taken (maximizing climate benefit per unit of implementation cost) and holding each other accountable. If climate change is likely to get worse, all four of these regions really do have a substantial incentive to prevent it, but there is a collective action problem where each may want to defect while getting the others to take measures to prevent it. That’s why a close collaboration is ideal, and the more enforceable, the better.

If that doesn’t happen, perhaps one or more of these regions could pressure the others into compliance. For instance, perhaps Europe could create pressure on other regions that are less motivated to take effective action (a hat tip to Justus Arnd for getting me to think about this strategy).

Climate Strategy 2: Technology

If we get really lucky, then without further intervention, technology might just advance fast enough that the problem ends up solving itself; new tech could make it in people’s own selfish interest to stop polluting so much.

I don’t think it’s at all wise to hope that we get lucky in this way, though. So a potentially viable strategy would be large (smart) investments in green tech. These could be in the form of huge prizes for key innovations that are on a critical path to reducing climate change. Or if someone can create tech that meets a certain specification, the government could guarantee it would buy a pre-specified (large) amount of it.

Or it could be that technology is accelerated by giving many grants and then making larger investments in the most promising areas. But these would have to be given out smartly – not just investing in any green tech. Such a strategy would probably involve taking many “smart risks” by putting money into new technologies that could cause large improvements if they pan out.

There are a lot of different potentially relevant technologies, from cleaner/more efficient/cheaper energy generation, to better battery technology, to carbon-capturing tech, etc. Government and non-profit funding is most valuable in those areas where tech could cause large societal benefits where the natural market reward mechanisms aren’t incentivizing sufficient action.

If all else fails, we may be able to use geoengineering-based tech strategies to solve the problem. While these could potentially be very promising, they would need to be used with enormous care to help avoid potentially catastrophic side effects or second-order consequences – and should ideally be done in careful collaboration (rather than being undertaken unilaterally).

Climate Strategy 3: Pressuring Megacorps

A surprisingly large proportion of greenhouse gases is emitted by just a few hundred companies (see here). If these companies could be effectively pressured to reduce their pollution, perhaps that could have a big impact. I’d like to give a big shout-out to Cassandra Xia, who made me aware of this very interesting approach.

How might this approach of influencing large companies work? One strategy is to combine votes from large institutional equity holders (e.g., mutual funds, colleges, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) so that they can influence these large companies to have more impact. Another strategy is to try to get consumers to demand change (and shame large companies) until they feel it is in their own financial interest to implement better practices. Of course, this has the danger that they make changes that look good from the outside without actually improving the situation.

Here’s some interesting info about this strategy: “the Climate Action 100+ initiative has an extremely specific, action-oriented agenda to pressure major corporations into cleaning up their carbon footprint. The initiative created a list of 161 focus companies – that together account for over 80% of global corporate greenhouse gas emissions – to target their efforts towards. Many of these are the sort of oil & gas majors that you’d expect, such as Exxon Mobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell, but they also include companies from transportation such as Ford, Toyota, and Boeing, consumer goods such as Nestle and Procter & Gamble, industrial goods manufacturers such as Dow and Caterpillar, and many others including 32 major electric utilities. For each industry, the initiative lays out a set of agenda items it wants its target companies to improve upon and a strategy for investors to get companies to comply, including by “voting for the removal of directors who have failed in their accountability of climate change risk.” (Source; hat tip Alyssa Vance)

Important note: There is a question here of direct vs. indirect creation of greenhouse gases. For instance, large energy companies provide energy to end consumers (such as small businesses and individuals who heat their homes and put gas in their cars). Do we count the greenhouse gases produced in that way as being attributable to the large energy company or to the end users of that energy? Depending on how we do that math, we may come to quite different conclusions about the extent to which greenhouse gases are attributable to large companies.

Meta-strategies

I’ll point out that I think there are a number of effective “meta” strategies that can help support the three big strategies mentioned above.

For instance:

(A) Groups like Work on Climate (https://workonclimate.org), co-founded by Cassandra Xia, are trying to mobilize more talented people to go into the climate space and help them find good projects to work on.

(B) Groups like the Future Matters Project (https://futuremattersproject.org/), co-founded by Justus Baumann, are exploring ways to effectively strengthen and grow social movements to help support the big strategies above. They are also helping to train other groups and people already working on climate change in approaches that can enhance their effectiveness.

If you are looking for projects to support, consider supporting (A) or (B).

If you are interested in how to take a more “effectiveness-minded” approach to helping the world, you may find our free, interactive module useful: “Leave your Mark on The World“.

It is not climate-specific, but its lessons are applicable to the climate space.

Why I Find the Topic of Improving Climate Change Depressing

One thing that makes me depressed about climate change, as a cause area, is that I believe a huge number of good people with good intentions are applying strategies that won’t ultimately work to move the needle. And not in the “we have to try lots of strategies to figure out what works” way, more like “we have abundant evidence to see that this strategy doesn’t work, yet we continue to throw massive amounts of money and effort into it.” For instance, I’m skeptical of approaches that are mainly based on asking people to self-sacrifice in order to pollute less because they have been tried to a tremendous degree already, with very limited success. I don’t believe they will move the needle on pollution enough to make a substantial dent in the problem.

I would love to see a climate movement that is more focused on effectiveness, and more specifically, on strategies that might actually get the world to a much better place climate-wise.

I wish we lived in a world where just being a good person who invests a lot of time and effort into trying to work on a problem was enough. In fact, we live in a world where most strategies to solve big problems will fail, and to find better strategies, we have to be highly strategic in our approaches.

Truly small potatoes initiatives (like plastic straw bans) give us warm-and-fuzzy feelings while distracting us from doing things that might actually substantially help. It sometimes even feels like elements of the movement prefer environmental aesthetics over environmental change.

Maybe I’m Wrong

I’m far from an expert in climate, and I certainly could be very wrong about it in my thoughts above. And others have spent way more time thinking about this than I have. That’s why I’m asking you to change my mind.

So: what did I get wrong? What do you disagree with me on and why?

Are there other big strategies (beyond the big three mentioned above) that really could get us to a good place with the climate in the next 40 years? If so, I’d love to know about them.

It’s also possible I’m wrong about climate change being a big issue. I hope I am wrong, and the whole thing is overblown or a hoax. However, I don’t think that is true. While I do think that there is more uncertainty around the issue than is generally acknowledged, I don’t think that’s actually cause to dismiss it. A possible threat to civilization needs to be taken very seriously, even if it has only a 10% chance of happening, and I think significant climage change has a higher chance than that.

Currently, I’m most concerned that warming will not only hit the average of what climate models estimate but will exceed it. I believe the negative consequences are non-linear (i.e., 8 degrees of warming is way worse than 4 degrees, which is way worse than 2 degrees of warming, which is way worse than 1 degree). If that’s true, then the biggest risks from climate change are the tail risks (i.e., that temperatures are even worse than predicted). The scariest scenarios I’m aware of are “runaway” feedback loop scenarios, where, after a tipping point, climate spirals out of control (or huge new negative consequences come into effect). That’s why model uncertainty doesn’t make me feel better but instead makes me feel much worse – because they increase the tail risk!

This piece was first written on September 14, 2020, and first appeared on this site on December 10, 2021.

1. Looping the Question

“What don’t I know that I must know?” This Meta Question is your obsession. The answer to that Meta Question is itself a question, and it leads you to create your first data loop (say, conducting a series of interviews with experts). After sucking down much of what it has to teach you, you’re hearing the same answers again and again. Data loops are ephemeral, but this one has served its purpose.

“What don’t I know that I must know?” you ask again. The answer yields your next question, which leads to your next data loop (say, reading many articles). Then that stops being as useful, and you construct your next loop (e.g., conducting a survey) and another (e.g., watching people use your product) and another (e.g., getting criticism from UI experts) and another (e.g., studying the statistics of user behavior) and yet another (e.g., attempting to sell your product at different prices). For each question, you look to the many tools on your tool belt (e.g., user interviews, expert feedback, surveys, A/B tests, analysis of user behavior, etc.) to pick the tool that is most suited for answering it. You are a master asker of questions, an expert looper of the answers.

2. Programming the Machine

You are constructing a machine out of gears. Some parts are made of metal or plastic, but mostly they are made of bits or people. Every month the machine produces a series of outputs, some intermediate, some final. You inspect these carefully.

Do the outputs have the right weight, color, clarity, cost efficiency, quality, quantity? Which part of the machine is bottlenecking the rest? Which part could use lubrication, or gas, or computation, or money, or inspiration? Which part of the machine is grinding to a halt, working against the rest, rotting inside, or about to fly apart? You perform intuitive calculus. What gear has the highest derivative of output with respect to dollars (or hours) of further investment?

As you feed it, the machine keeps growing bigger and more complex. You no longer have a complete understanding of how it operates – nobody does. It has ever more parts that can break, greater momentum which resists changing direction, more fuel needed to move it, more of a mind of its own. You battle the exploding complexity while the metal/plastic/flesh/binary monster of your creation lurches forward, smoke and steam spewing from its exhaust pipes. If you expertly wield the tools at your disposal, you can still usually manage to nudge it a tad to the left or a bit to the right, making sure it stays roughly on course.

3. Polishing the Stone

At first, you have a crude stone with countless rough edges. You show it to everyone. It looks like beach trash. It does almost nothing. People are confused why you are so excited about it. No one can see the form you see, trapped inside (though your friends try to, or at least try hard to pretend that they do). “Who would want that?” people silently wonder as they nod at what you’re saying. And these people are correct – no one wants it. You’re peddling rubbish.

But you believe in your stone. With enormous effort, you smooth the stone’s thousand rough edges. “You didn’t really need to smooth edge #732”, someone points out. “One little edge makes almost no difference.” This person is correct. Smoothing any single point makes *almost* no difference. Yet by smoothing one thousand rough edges, you’ve created a beautiful gem. It’s now the best of its kind in all the world. It’s now desired. “The idea was obvious,” people mutter, “I could have thought of that.”

4. Outlasting the Jungle

You’ve just parachuted into a dense jungle. Everyone knows there are treasures of incredible value buried there – in many different locations, in fact – but nobody knows where the treasure is. To make matters worse, the jungle is crawling with snakes, spiders, alligators, hungry bears, angry bears, crazy bears, bats, spike traps, people-eating plants, dragons, and buffalo, plus far too many other treasure hunters like you.

The vast majority of those who enter the jungle will end up fleeing it empty-handed. After a few snake/bear/buffalo/dragon bites and a few miles (or hundred miles) of strenuously hacking through the jungle, without ever quite knowing which direction to go, most have had enough.

Occasionally, though, people leave the jungle with some treasure in tow. And every once in a while, a group emerges with what is truly a king’s fortune. There is no shortage of treasure hunters. But you are different than the others. You are prepared, courageous, and confident – and you learn quickly. You have plenty of funding, a knife gripped between your teeth, a crossbow on your back, a net slung across one shoulder, bear spray for the bears, dragon spray for the dragons, grenades in case things get really tough, a tiny army at your back, 22 different maps written by 22 former adventurers (that semi-contradict each other), and a determination of tempered steel.

You know that if you can stay in the jungle longer than all the others – if, when others are falling down and coming apart, you can rally and try ten more paths to glory – while gaining skills from each failed outing – you will vastly increase your chances of success.

But then again, as you look around, you see dense thickets full of thorns in all directions. The tree cover blots out most of the sun, casting long, foreboding shadows. There is a faint bellowing roar in the distance, but the pitch is too low to identify its direction. And sweat beads on your forehead. “Which way?” your tiny army asks you.

So you’re thinking of starting a startup? Become a looper of questions to know how to program the machine that will polish the stone while you outlast the jungle.

This essay was first written on December 22, 2018, and first appeared on this site on January 28, 2022.