Quick takes

Coal and nuclear electricity generation kill a significant number of fish through water intake systems. This matters for evaluating the impact of any new electricity load. Most thermal power plants (coal, nuclear, and to a lesser extent gas) draw large volumes of water from rivers and lakes for cooling. This causes two underappreciated harms to fish: Impingement — fish get trapped against water intake filters and die. Entrainment — eggs, larvae, and small fish are pulled through pumps and heat exchangers, killing them. A single coal plant in Ohio (Bay Shore coal plant) killed roughly 46 million fish and 2.2 billion fish eggs and larvae in 2005–06. Some thermal plants use evaporative cooling while others return the water to the source warmer than it was drawn. This thermal pollution stresses aquatic life in two compounding ways: elevated temperatures reduce dissolved oxygen levels while simultaneously increasing organisms' metabolic oxygen demand. Even small temperature increases can cause declines in bottom-dwelling species, and organisms in already-warm environments are especially vulnerable. Impingement and entrainment don’t affect fish population levels because many of them would have died young anyway, other things like pollution have a much greater effect, and “only” ~10% of the wild population died due to the coal plant in the above case of the Ohio Bay Shore coal plant and Maumee River. It's also unclear what the net effect on wild-animal suffering is when comparing death in a water intake to death by natural causes. And as electricity generation shifts from thermal plants toward renewables, these specific harms should diminish. From an EA perspective, this seems worth flagging for anyone working on wild animal welfare or assessing the environmental footprint of new electricity load like compute scaling. The fish mortality numbers are large in absolute terms even if they seem unlikely to cause population-loss, and this externality rarely features in dis

I went to jail yesterday in Wisconsin. I helped rescue 23 beagles in a large mass open rescue against a factory farm, Ridglan Farms, near Madison. We were trying to push the police to act on documented animal cruelty at Ridglan. Instead they arrested me and 26 other activists. I wrote a blog post about why I did it.. Excerpt: More info and stories from Wayne Hsiung: https://blog.simpleheart.org/p/im-in-jail-for-rescuing-dogs-its If you're in the DC area, I'll be sharing more about my experience at Revolutionists' Night, an animal welfare meetup, this Thursday. Reach out for an invite. [Edited to add:] I believe there is a lawful basis for this action and I intend to fight any attempted prosecution in court! I'm not advocating any illegal activity, of course.

Researchers simulate an entire fly brain on a laptop. Is a human brain next? What is the implication of this for EA thinking? Does the fly that purely exists in the computer warrant moral consideration, and could we increase the overall welfare of the world by making millions of these simulations with ideal fruit-fly conditions?    They fully copied the brain of the fly, so from my understanding it should also feel pleasure and pain in theory, I think this poses a real conundrum for EA morality.

There are two UK government consultations closing March 9th, for: (1) banning cages for 7 million hens, and (2) reducing the pain that castration and tail docking practices for lambs cause, such as requiring pain relief. In the UK are 7 million hens (21%) still in cages, and roughly 17 million lambs that go through these painful procedures every year.  You can use these guides to make your response, to make these changes more likely to happen:  Hens: https://tinyurl.com/cage-consultation  Lambs: https://tinyurl.com/lamb-consultation  If you prefer, you can sign up for this online event on Sunday 5pm-6pm UTC, where we'll be writing and submitting our responses together. 

Farmed animal welfare is one of the most important cause areas out there. Though we’ve written about animal welfare broadly before, we recently published a dedicated piece on farmed animals specifically. Given how often this cause area shows up on our job board and throughout our content, we thought it deserved its own standalone overview, which covers: * How different farmed animals are treated, including fish, crustaceans, and insects. * Promising approaches already reducing suffering at scale. * Why farmed animal welfare remains highly neglected despite its enormous scale. * Concrete ways you can get involved, whether through your career or otherwise. It’s intended as an approachable introduction to the cause area; if you're already familiar with farmed animal welfare, especially through other EA content, you probably won't be surprised by much here. But if you're new to the topic or looking for a solid overview to share with others, you might find it useful. You can read the full article here.

On alternative proteins: I think the EA community could aim to figure out how to turn animal farmers into winners if we succeed with alternative proteins. This seems to be one of the largest social risks, and it's probably something we should figure out before we scale alternative proteins a lot. Farmers are typically a small group but have a large lobby ability and public sympathy.

Potential Animal Welfare intervention: encourage the ASPCA and others to scale up their FAW budget I’ve only recently come to appreciate how large the budgets are for the ASPCA, Humane World (formerly HSUS), and similar large, broad-based animal charities. At a quick (LLM) scan of their public filings, they appear to have a combined annual budget of ~$1Bn, most of which is focused on companion animals. Interestingly, both the ASPCA and Humane World explicitly mention factory farming as one of their areas of concern. Yet, based on available data, it looks like <5% of spending in this category is directed toward factory-farmed animal welfare — despite factory farming accounting for the overwhelming majority of total animal suffering. Given that factory farming is already in scope for these orgs, and that is responsible for the vast majority of animal suffering, it would seem quite reasonable for these orgs to increase their spending on FAW several-fold. I doubt their donors would object!

Should GiveWell offer Animal Welfare regrants on an opt-in basis? The GiveWell FAQ (quoted below) suggests that GiveWell focuses exclusively on human-directed interventions primarily for reasons of specialization—i.e., avoiding duplication of work already done by Coefficient Giving and others—rather than due to a principled objection to recommending animal-focused charities. If GiveWell is willing to recommend these organizations when asked, why not reduce the friction a bit? A major part of GiveWell’s appeal has been its role as an “index fund for charities.” While ACE and similar groups offer something comparable for animal causes, GiveWell has a much larger donor base, and donors often prefer to consolidate their giving into a single recurring contribution. An optional Animal Welfare allocation could serve those donors better while remaining consistent with GiveWell’s stated reasoning.