[My views are my own, not my employer's. Thanks to Michael Dickens for reviewing this post prior to publication.]
[More discussion here]
Summary
Spreading ethical offsetting is antithetical to EA values because it encourages people to focus on negating harm they personally cause rather than doing as much good as possible. Also, the most favored reference class for the offsets is rather vague and arbitrary.
There are a few positive aspects of using ethical offsets, and situations in which advocating ethical offsets may be effective.
Definition
Ethical offsetting is the practice of undoing harms caused by one's activities through donations or other acts of altruism. Examples of ethical offsetting include purchasing carbon offsets to make up for one’s carbon emissions and donating to animal charities to offset animal product consumption. More explanation and examples are available in this article.
Against offsetting
I think ethical offsetting is antithetical to EA values, and have three main objections to it.
1) In practice, people doing ethical offsetting use vague and arbitrary reference classes.
2) It's not the most effectively altruistic thing to do.
3) It spreads suboptimal and non-consequentialist memes/norms about doing good.
1) The reference class people pick for ethical offsets is arbitrary.
For example, let's say I cause some harm by buying milk that came from a cow that was treated poorly, and I want to negate the harm. I have a bunch of options.
I cannot undo the exact harm done by my purchase once it's happened, but I could (try to) seek out that specific cow and try to do something nice for her, negating the harm I caused for that specific cow's utility calculus. I could donate some money to a charity that helps cows, negating my harmful effect on the total utility of cow-kind. I could donate some money to a charity that helps all farmed animals, negating my harmful effect on farmed animal-kind. Or I could donate to whatever charity I thought did the most good per dollar, negating my negative impact on the universe most cost-effectively but less directly.
People seem to settle on a sort of broad cause-area-level offsetting preference (e.g. donating to help farmed animals). While reference class seems intuitive, it's ultimately arbitrary*.
2) Ethical offsetting isn't the most effectively altruistic thing.
You should do the things you think are most effectively altruistic, and you should donate to the charities you think are most effective. If you eat dead animals and don't believe animal charities are the most effective charities, I don't think you should donate to them.
Like everything else, ethical offsetting has opportunity costs; you could use that money to donate to the best charity, which is often different from the charity you’re using for ethical offsetting. It causes a harm relative to the world where you donate only to the most effective charity.
Even if you think the charity you donate your offsetting money to is the most effective, I don’t think it’s helpful to do ethical offsetting. Much of the suffering in the world isn’t directly caused by anyone, so an offsetting mindset increases the probability that you’ll miss big sources of suffering down the line. It causes a bias towards addressing anthropogenic harms, rather than harms from nature.
3) Ethical offsetting spreads anti-EA memes and norms
Ethical offsetting reinforces a preoccupation with not doing harmful things (instead of not allowing harmful things to happen, and taking action when they do). But EAs should (and usually do) focus on the sufferers, not themselves.
By encouraging others to offset, we set norms oriented around people’s personal behavior. We encourage an inefficient model of charity that involves donating based on one’s activities, not one’s abilities or the needs of charities that help neutralize various harms. We miss the chance to communicate about core EA ideas like cause prioritization and room for more funding by establishing a framework that has little room for them.
There are some other dangers involved in ethical offsetting, although I haven’t seen much evidence they actually occur: Offsetting may also encourage unhealthy scrupulosity about the harms we inevitably contribute to in order to function (although it could also help alleviate anxiety about them). And as Scott Alexander points out, offsetting could lead people to think it’s acceptable to do big harmful things as long as they offset them. This could contribute to careless and destructive norms about personal behavior.
Caveats
Offsetting is better than nothing. There may be situations in which ethical offsetting is the biggest plausible ask one can make. In such situations, I think bringing up the idea of ethical offsetting may be appropriate. And it may be an interesting conversation starter about sources of suffering and ways of alleviating them.
I've previously discussed my concerns about the obstacles to changing one's mind about cause prioritization, and I can imagine ethical offsetting at the cause area level being used to remind oneself about various causes of suffering in the world and the organizations working to stop them. This could make it easier to change one’s mind about what’s most effective. It seems somewhat plausible that offsetting would help make the community better at updating and better informed.
It may be really psychologically beneficial for some people, similar to the way donations for the dubiously-named fuzzies (donations for causes that are especially personally meaningful to the donor rather than maximally effective) sometimes are.
I think the argument that we should focus on doing lots of good rather than fixing harms we cause could drive destructive thoughtlessness about personal behavior, so I’m wary about making it too frequently. I’m most worried about this concern.
*The reference class schelling point is stronger with carbon offsets, where the harmful thing is adding some carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide molecules are pretty interchangeable. If you remove as many as you added, you neutralize the harm from your emissions-causing action very directly, which is intuitively appealing.
All suffering may be equally important, but not all forms of harm are the same, or even similar. How similar the harm you offset is to the harm you cause can vary a lot. Few other types of offsetting I’ve heard of allow the opportunity to create a future so similar to the one where the harmful activity had never been done.
Cool, this mostly seems right.
I think the harmfulness of offsetting's focus on collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering is still being underestimated in these conversation. (I'm using "collectively anthropogenic" because there are potential sources of badness like UFAI that are anthropogenic, but only caused by a few people to the idea of offsetting would be useless to spread to most people to address the problem of UFAI. Also, offsetting the harm done by UFAI would be, uh, tricky.) I think offsetting might even reenforce a non-interventionist mindset that could prove extremely harmful for addressing problems like wild animal suffering.
One good aspect of offsetting that I think I initially underestimated is the way it can be used as a psychological tool for beginning to alieve that a cause area matters. For example, I can imagine an individual who is beginning to suspect animals suffering is important, but finds the idea of vegetarianism or veganism daunting, and shies away from it and thus doesn't want to think more about animal suffering. For them, offsetting could be a good bridge step. I don't think this conflicts with anything I said, but I don't want people to feel like it's shameful to use this tool.
I'd want to add on to:
Pro 3: If you're just offsetting, it's worth only as much as one additional vegan (if your numbers are right). I haven't seen evidence that ethical offsetting leads to big regular donors. It may, and if you just meant to bring up the possibility that seems reasonable.
Pro 4: People who eat animal products can donate to animal charities even if it's not offsetting. That's great! But you don't need offsetting to introduce that possibility. I think offsetting harmfully frames the discussion around them "making up" for their behavior, instead of possibly just making large donations that help lots of animals. Many vegetarians enthusiastically make large donations to animal charities, which is wonderful, without worrying about offsetting. I don't know what happened at your last meetup but I think it's awesome when nonvegans donate to animal charities. Pro 6: I'm not sure how offsetting helps bridge this schism well. I can imagine some arguments about how it would help, and others about how it would hurt.
Con 5: I'm not sure how offsetting signals a willingness to defect. Could you explain that more?
Collectively anthropogenic sources of suffering: True, and that class of suffering is already broad. I wouldn’t expect people to extend their circle of compassion to even just the harm caused by all of humanity just via the idea of offsetting. The friends and family scenario is probably already the limit.
Psychological tool: Indeed. This tool is also one that can be employed without using the term “offsetting,” like “If veganism is too hard for you at this point, just reduce chicken, eggs, and fish. You can also donate to one of ACE’s top charities. That mi... (read more)