alexis schoenlaub
Bio
Participation6
Last year agronomy student, doing my thesis on recycling urine as a fertilizer. I am interested in most ea subjects.
How others can help me
Help me build effectivesdg, community building advice and general advice
How I can help others
Is agronomy a possible effective career ?
Posts 2
Comments6
Hello,
Yes I believe we see some people in the community talking about downstream ripple effects. Here I wanted to point out that it was not in the values nor the principles of CEA which I believe would be important. I do not have specific examples (It seem to me that RP portfolio is made to reflect your opinion of risk not a factual risk). If I had to give some examples I would say that a lot of ea orgs aren't clear about theyr choice and the possible downside of theyr work like Givewell, the life you can save, Giving green etc.. For example in neither of both Givewell or The Life You Can Save website's you can find the GHD vs AW dilemna, in Giving green you can't find possible downsides of advancing energy or decarbonising energy... I really appreciate the work that they are doing. The more problematic for me is companys that have a great impact like Open ai. They are making money devellopping a dangerous technology without acknowledging the risk they are taking. I realise my criticism isn't worth a lot since I am to ideal for the real world where funders probably don't want to hear about GHD vs AW. Nonetheless, I believe responsability should be part of the EA values and we should be more cautious about areas where the community has a great impact (because it took hold of neglected issues like AI)
I read some of the answer and they were really interesting. I like to simplify so i will bring my modest simple answer and my advice :
I have a amateur answer but i am not an expert although this topic interest me a lot being interested in sustainability, agronomy and ea (here global health and animal farming) :
Firstly pro donating to animal farming :
- if you believe in animal having a moral weight similar (1 - 10x) to humans it is probable that saving a human life might be negative compared to saving 100 - 1000 animals.
- We know that our way of living is not sustainable. We also know that one reason why our lifestyle is not sustainable is animal farming.
Secondly pro donating to save a life :
- Saving a life is good (its one of the first moral reflex if it happens in front of you and)
- You never know what people will do with their life. They probably eat local non industrial products and dont cause much pollution if they are poor.
My opinion : Saving a human life will probably do a little bad because it causes the death of some animals (not necessarily factory farm) and causes pollutions - we are not sustainable (dependent of polluting fertilizer N,P,K). Saving animals will probably do a little good because we would be more sustainable. So I would focus on saving non-human animals because it will probably help all animals and the opposite is probably false.
Now my advice :
- If you don't know the answer find some informations. When you have your answer keep being open-minded. I think this topic could be researched a hole lifetime without covering every aspect of it. Keep in mind since morals are subjectives there is no right answer. But since this quesion is important you should research the subject. I believe collective intelligence is the best "moral objectivity" we could acheive if everybody is well informed.
- Life is never black or white and full of other dilemnas. Saving a human life or other animals are not your only two options wich brings me to my last opinion : before doing one or the other we should focus on discussing this subject with the most people possible. Or at least make sure everybody knows animals suffer (especially factory farmed) and everybody knows we can save lives with 5000$
I agree this is an important subject !
- I think maybe because the most cost effective actions might be in rainforests where most of the biodiversity is (as i remember). This is more a political question of the countries near the equator. Most of them i dont know if there are a lot of people who know of ea in these countries (which is one of my main criticism about ea) but i believe there could be ea brasil. I would look in this direction :)
- Biodiversity is a complicated subject because numbers can't quite describe the situation. I believe it is a systemical problem with systemical solutions like going vegetarian (proveg.org).
I saw a lot of comments of why it isnt a ea subject and i believe it good to compare advantages and disadvantages (i wont elaborate on your criticism).
Advantages :
- Many of humanity's vital ressources are linked to biodiversity.
- Many of the technologies that we discover come from biodiversity. Loss of biodiversity = loss of scientific information.
- Biodiversity is part of a systemic problem of the biocapicity of earth (see planetary boundaries) which is neglected.
- Biodiversity and climate change make more probable existancial risk because they are systemic. This means for example war, famine and epidemics wich feed of each other and is in itself an underlooked and potentialy high impact.
Thank you for your post. I agree that climate change is underfunded in EA, and I’m happy to see Rethink Priorities updating its models. I also wonder whether GHD is somewhat overfunded by EA, especially since some interventions can accelerate economic development in ways that increase environmental pressures if they are not accompanied by systemic change. Climate change will itself have major consequences for global health and development. I’m particularly skeptical of approaches that rely on producing mosquito nets, medicines, etc. in Europe and shipping them elsewhere rather than strengthening local capacity and resilience.
On another note, I came to the Forum because I want to raise money for climate action during a demonstration in Geneva. Having been part of the EA community for a few years, I naturally looked at Effective Altruism Switzerland’s climate fund, but something didn’t quite click for me. I had a similar feeling when looking at Giving Green: it seems quite focused on technological solutions. I’m therefore looking for another organization to support, although I’m open to changing my mind. I’ve been a fan of GFI for years, for example, but I’m not convinced that plant-based meat and dairy analogues are a sufficient answer to climate adaptation in agriculture—they are only one part of the solution. What about the campaign beans is how? I also looked briefly at Deploy/US (though obviously nowhere near as deeply as Giving Green), and I have the impression that its European counterpart, The Shift Project, takes a somewhat more grounded approach. More broadly, I sometimes worry that focusing on decarbonizing aviation, cement, heating, or meat production can lead us to optimize the existing system rather than question what kind of system we actually want. I would like to see more resilient communities, sufficient food in both quantity and quality—fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes, and perhaps some meat, including from agricultural residues or as part of agroecosystem management—and accessible healthcare. I’m not opposed to technological solutions when they are genuinely the most cost-effective way to achieve these goals, but I would value more diversification in climate philanthropy. Otherwise, what happens if we successfully decarbonize cement, aviation, and energy in 20 years, but then discover that transforming the underlying food, health, democratic, and social systems still takes another 30–50 years? I worry that we could end up having optimized the technologies around the existing system without having invested enough in making the system itself more resilient.
Thank you for your time,
Alexis Schoenlaub
[email protected]