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Second highest priority
The ongoing climate change is the risk most people have heard of and which also receives a lot of attention in the media. As you know, global warming risks seriously worsening the conditions for life on earth. If we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than under the Paris Agreement, scientists estimate a 50% risk of temperature increases of 3.5ºC and a 10% risk of increases above 4.7ºC. Above all, with higher warming, we risk serious outcomes, such as lack of food and water, large movements of vulnerable populations and reduced global stability. There is also a non-negligible probability that the temperature will rise even more, especially if we do not reduce emissions according to existing agreements. This would mean that the consequences worsen further. In the most extreme scenarios, climate change risks contributing to the collapse of human civilization.
Promising career paths in the field are researching what outcomes we can expect at higher emission levels as well as investigating suitable strategies to mitigate the worst effects. You can also pursue a career in politics, think tanks or journalism to advocate for measures such as carbon taxes and investment in new technologies. Further options are to, as an engineer or researcher, develop technology that can reduce emissions and/or their consequences.
Kristian’s start-up gives companies incentives to reduce their emissions
A useful concept for understanding climate change is what economists call negative externalities . This means that costs arise in transactions that neither burden the buyer nor the seller, but instead affect a third party. The use of fossil fuels causes e.g. damage to the environment that producers or consumers do not pay for directly, which means they lack financial incentives to change their behavior. The realization of the consequences of such inadequate incentives led Kristian to start Normative.
“To create a sustainable future and reduce global disaster risk, we must change the way we price goods and the way we record economic success. We are in the middle of a mass extinction where one million species are at risk of disappearing , four million people die from air pollution and tens of billions of animals die annually for human consumption. Despite the fact that these phenomena have enormous moral consequences, they are not included in the companies’ balance sheets and income statements.
Normative has created a software that helps large companies to automatically calculate how much indirect negative and positive impact they have. The goal is that the increased transparency of previously invisible costs (and benefits!) will contribute to changing the incentives.
Kristian has studied mathematics, theoretical philosophy and was a project manager at the Future of Humanity Institute in Oxford, which does research on existential risks. His previous role is promising for those who want to make a big difference, but Kristian chose the entrepreneurial path after identifying greater potential to do good:
“I thought about whether there was an opportunity cost in my role. Even if a job has a high impact, your marginal impact may be minimal if someone else can do it just as well. If, on the other hand, you are trying to develop a new technology through a start-up, you are almost by definition irreplaceable for a period. ‘If you don’t do it, no one else will’”.