> many people are already focused on it, and it is therefore not an especially "neglected" area.
OK. Spend an afternoon reading about the current funding environment for decarbonization projects, vs the amount of capital available for AI, which is driving an increase in carbon emissions.
When I first encountered this argument back in the 20-teens, it didn't make sense, because there was effectively no forward progress on decarbonization. Much has changed since then, and the transition is moving, but it's moving in fits and starts, in punctuated bursts driven by reactions to long-predicted disasters actually showing up at the doorsteps of people with money (see, for example, the explosion in climate tech funding following San Francisco's "orange sky day" in 2020).
If we had an AI-data-center-boom-sized pile of cash to set on fire, we'd have completed the clean energy transition already. What's happening instead is that any hard tech company related to reducing emissions that hasn't already pivoted to some kind of AI-related marketing message is struggling to stay afloat, while losses at the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to accelerate, and everyone seems fine with that.
All the EA language around climate change is CYA bullshit. If this was true:
> Working on this issue seems to be among the best ways of improving the long-term future we know of..."
Then the above conditions would not obtain.