How to choose a cause: Climate Framework Part II
Read The stories we tell ourselves: Climate Framework Part I here.
A company with a social mission faces two big tasks: maximize profits and maximize impacts. It’s sometimes contradictory, but often is not. To tackle this, I will borrow the framework from Effective Altruism, a movement that tries to tackle another problem: how to choose non-profits that are most effective. Despite its focus on non-profits, the framework is useful especially for social entrepreneurship as these two problems are two sides of the same coin: both try to maximize impacts per dollar spent, while trying to be sustainable in the long run.
The framework is simple:
Cost-effectiveness = Importance x Tractability x Neglectedness
Importance: How big is the problem?
The best way to answer this problem is by looking at our current carbon dioxide emission and sources. This will be further discussed in the What section. This is also a convenient heuristic as compared to looking at potential market capitalization, because the larger the carbon dioxide emission a source is, the larger the potential market that the company is working on, because carbon dioxide is directly correlated to growth, energy and material creation.
The connection should be obvious: the bigger the problem, the more we should put efforts into it. A great example is a campaign to save the planet by plugging out your phones and laptops. Even if every household does this in the US, we will save 0.18% of the total electricity consumption. Compare this with a campaign to increase electric vehicles, which, if successful, will save up to 20% of total electricity consumption. Which one should we give priority to?
This is an important truth that we need to be aware of: not all actions are equal. Some will have much higher potential than others. Thus, we should focus on the biggest market possible.
Tractability: How much more of the problem will be solved if we increase resources into them?
In addition to importance, we need to look at tractability. Some problems are easier to solve than others. Installing solar panels are easier than building a new nuclear power plan, which in turn is easier than researching and creating energy from nuclear fusion. Thus, given an area of equal importance, we should prioritize solutions that are easier to achieve.
In this regard, one of the best ways to do so would be spreading current technology to different parts of the world, especially in developing markets which will dominate global growth in the next 50 years. The economic growth will require increasing amount of energy and infrastructure, which can be created sustainably without the needs to retrofitting infrastructure like in developed market. The growing opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship further creates more room for creative problem-solving. As an example, a current company, SolarTaxi Ghana, leases electric vehicles to customers in Ghana, allowing the country to bypass traditional fuel-based cars. We can imagine similar potential as countries fuel their growth not with outdated coal stations, but renewable energies.
In fact, many governments are at the very least open to the ideas, with some actively pursuing it. China’s wind and solar production has skyrocketed because its government is encouraging development. We can expect similar moves from India, South East Asia and Africa, where the majority of global growth will be.
Neglectedness: How much work is being done on the problem already?
With high importance and high tractability, we finally turn to neglectedness — what problem areas are overlooked. A good example is electricity versus industry. With fossil fuels as the main culprit, electricity and heat production accounts for 25% overall carbon emissions. It is the highest category, but it’s also one with a lot of solutions: solar, wind, nuclear, electric vehicles, heat pumps, etc. Industry, meanwhile, accounts for 21% overall carbon emissions, and a lot of high-intensity production associated with high carbon emission, such as production of cement, iron and steel which requires high heat often obtained from fossil fuels, have few solutions. Obviously then, we should be spending more resources on creating greener industrial processes, because they are more neglected than energy resources.Other examples include climate science current lack of research on the tail-end consequences of climate change (eg. What would happen if the Earth warms by more than 10 degree Celsius?). The more neglected a problem is, the more resources we should poor on it, given that it is indeed important and tractable.
In summary
When evaluating what to work on, consider:
- How big is the problem?
- How easy is it to solve the problem?
- How much work needs to be done that isn’t being worked on?
When viewed as a whole, it seems like climate action is challenging: it’s a big problem, it’s very difficult to solve, and there’s a lot more work to be done. But when we break down the problem further, there are many potential solutions and problem areas that can be worked on, which will maximize the good that they bring. This will be discussed further in part III of the climate framework.
This is the second article in a 3-part series where I attempt to articulate my thoughts on the climate crisis, and how we can solve it.
Read The stories we tell ourselves: Climate Framework Part I here.
Read What Needs to be Done: Climate Framework part III here.
