Has there been any discussions of the carbon costs of saving lives? e.g. you save an estimated 100 lives via AMF donations, how much do you need to donate to CATF to offset that? It might help people balance the causes they care about.
In some ways that’s the opposite of how I think about it. If you’re considering spending money to make the world better, my view is you should spend that money on whatever most improves the world. If you think that is AMF donations, you should just do that. If you think that is carbon offers, or carbon tax advocacy organizations, you should do that instead.
The main model I can think of where you should both give to AMF and also buy offsets for it is one where you’re trying to promote a norm that everyone should offset the emissions that come from their decisions. I don’t think this norm is likely to catch on, and I think a tax is a much better way to implement something similar.
Quick estimate: Global average is 4.8 tons per person = $50 additional per year per life saved = ~$1500 total (over 30 additional years of life), so over the course of saving an average person’s life the costs if you’re buying offsets are the same order as the costs of saving a life via a Givewell charity (~half).
For the people helped by Givewell recommended charities, the additional CO2 emissions are probably lower; among the world’s poorest, <1 tons of CO2 per capita per year is pretty common, which is <$300 over a lifetime, about an order of magnitude less than the cost of saving a life.
Has there been any discussions of the carbon costs of saving lives? e.g. you save an estimated 100 lives via AMF donations, how much do you need to donate to CATF to offset that? It might help people balance the causes they care about.
In some ways that’s the opposite of how I think about it. If you’re considering spending money to make the world better, my view is you should spend that money on whatever most improves the world. If you think that is AMF donations, you should just do that. If you think that is carbon offers, or carbon tax advocacy organizations, you should do that instead.
The main model I can think of where you should both give to AMF and also buy offsets for it is one where you’re trying to promote a norm that everyone should offset the emissions that come from their decisions. I don’t think this norm is likely to catch on, and I think a tax is a much better way to implement something similar.
Expanded this into a full post: https://www.jefftk.com/p/offset-norms
Thanks for the helpful reply!
Quick estimate: Global average is 4.8 tons per person = $50 additional per year per life saved = ~$1500 total (over 30 additional years of life), so over the course of saving an average person’s life the costs if you’re buying offsets are the same order as the costs of saving a life via a Givewell charity (~half).
For the people helped by Givewell recommended charities, the additional CO2 emissions are probably lower; among the world’s poorest, <1 tons of CO2 per capita per year is pretty common, which is <$300 over a lifetime, about an order of magnitude less than the cost of saving a life.
It sounds like you’re assuming that averting the death of a child means there will be an additional person in expectation? Instead it looks more like parents have a target number of kids: https://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/04/16/the-mortality-fertility-link/
Thanks for the helpful reply!