It’s interesting that climate change keeps coming up as an analogy. Climate change activists have always had a very specific path that they favored: global government regulation (or tax) of carbon emissions. As the years went on and no effective regulation emerged, they grew increasingly frustrated and pessimistic. (Similarly, alignment pessimists are frustrated that their preferred path, technical alignment, is not paying off.) In my view, even though they did not get what specifically wanted, climate change activist’s work did pay off in the form of Obama’s “All of the Above” energy strategy (shotgun approach), which led to solar innovation and scaled up manufacturing, which led to dramatically falling prices for solar energy, which is now leading to fossil fuels being out-competed in the market.
It’s interesting that climate change keeps coming up as an analogy. Climate change activists have always had a very specific path that they favored: global government regulation (or tax) of carbon emissions. As the years went on and no effective regulation emerged, they grew increasingly frustrated and pessimistic. (Similarly, alignment pessimists are frustrated that their preferred path, technical alignment, is not paying off.) In my view, even though they did not get what specifically wanted, climate change activist’s work did pay off in the form of Obama’s “All of the Above” energy strategy (shotgun approach), which led to solar innovation and scaled up manufacturing, which led to dramatically falling prices for solar energy, which is now leading to fossil fuels being out-competed in the market.