Martin Hare Robertson - Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism

My Background

In 2016 I read The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer. This book had a profound impact on me as I learned that there was strong evidence that saving a life through the most effective global health charities costs ~$5000 (source). The book also made a strong moral argument that if you are in a high paying job then you should consider giving 10% of your income to effective charities. This is on the basis that being paid 90% of a high salary is likely to feel almost identical to being paid 100% and that 10% difference can literally save lives.

I took the Giving What We Can pledge in 2017 to donate 10% of my income to effective charities. I primarily support the Founders Pledge Climate Change Fund. In 2023 I accepted a new Climate Tech job which involved taking a >10% salary pay cut and so for now I'm treating that choice of job as counting against my Giving What We Can pledge in place of donating cash.

I wrote a talk in 2017 to summarize what I had learned about Effective Altruism and why I found it so compelling:

Climate Change

You have 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for 40 years. I am currently trying to spend my 80,000 hours working on Climate Change.

In 2020 I had a call with a consultant from 80,000 hours to discuss the most effective way for me to apply my career to working on climate change. Since that call 80,000 Hours have been introducing other people to me who they speak to about wanting to work on Climate Change. Since then I have been introduced to 45+ other people who are interested in using their 80,000 hours to work on climate. I have had calls with 15+ of these people to discuss their situation and share my own perspective. Based on these calls I have written down some thoughts and advice about Working on Climate Change as a Technologist.

I have written some articles related to the intersection between Effective Altruism and Climate Change:

2019-10-07 - Updated Climate Change Problem Profile - In this post I detailed several points of feedback about the 80,000 Hours Climate Change problem profile (published in April 2016, still the latest version in March 2020) which I used as motivation to draft an updated problem profile. This problem profile has since been updated.
2019-10-20 - Review of Climate Cost-Effectiveness Analyses - In this post I examined four previous attempts to examine aspects of the impact of climate change and/or the cost-effectiveness of climate change interventions. I argued that the estimates which have been completed so far don't make a compelling case that mitigating climate change is actually order(s) of magnitude less effective compared to global health interventions, with many of the remaining uncertainties making it very plausible that climate change interventions are indeed much more effective.
2020-05-23 - Climate Change Is Neglected By EA - In this post I argued:
1. Due to the inherent difficulty of predicting the full impacts of climate change, there is limited evidence about exactly what these impacts will be. EA has drawn questionable conclusions from the evidence that does exist.
2. EA considers Climate Change as “not neglected” based on the amount of effort already being made, rather than the results achieved.
3. EA downplays the huge impacts from currently expected levels of climate change (section 4), focusing instead on whether climate change is an x-risk. This approach risks alienating many people from EA.
4. Climate change has many different impacts, this is a poor fit for EA which tries to quantify problems using simple models, leading to undervaluing of action on climate change. The EA model of prioritising between causes doesn't work for climate change which has a broad and effectively permanent impact.
The result of all of this is to visibly neglect and undervalue climate change in EA publications.
2023-08-15 - Climate Change: Known Unknowns, Questionable Substitutability, and Looking Beyond Carbon Taxes - In this post I argued:
1. The dollar value of climate impacts are going to be underestimated for the foreseeable future.
2. Reducing climate impacts to a dollar value renders some kinds of harm invisible, hiding critical moral and political questions about what we value.
3. Directly prioritising carbon reduction measures based on cost and supporting as many as necessary to reach explicit targets is likely to be much more effective.
4. A carbon tax is only one part of the required policy mix to drive climate action.

Climate Change Resources

Effective Altruism Resources

www.effectivealtruism.org - Effective altruism is about doing good better
www.givewell.org - We search for the charities that save or improve lives the most per dollar.
www.givingwhatwecan.org - Giving What We Can is a community of effective givers. We provide the support, community, and information you need to do the most good with your charitable donations.
www.givingwhatwecan.org - Giving What We Can is a community of effective givers. We provide the support, community, and information you need to do the most good with your charitable donations.
80000hours.org - You have 80,000 hours in your career: 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for 40 years. That's a huge amount of time. And it means that your career is not only a major driver of your happiness — it's probably also your biggest opportunity to have a positive impact on the world. So how can you best spend those hours?