I studied sustainability and climate change during my Bachelor’s. It’s been a terrible salient and enormous problem and getting to working on it seemed crucial. Donating to climate causes also seemed incredibly important, and I donated 10-12% to climate causes, already before knowing of the Giving Pledge and fully offset my estimated up-to-now lifetime (i.e. not projected) emissions.
Now, I don’t donate to climate causes anymore and don’t offset anymore, despite this having been a large part of who I am.
My reasoning for donating to other causes (AIS, safeguarding democracy, animal welfare) instead is that climate change is now known enough that my additional Euros don’t add enough force anymore, and that this is a problem that we will have to solve, so resources will have to flow into the area.
Especially Animal Welfare is a cause that is less discussed, less in the public conscious, that receives little funding, and that crucially isn’t an issue that needs to be solved. We could keep on doing atrocities decade after decade and voters themselves would be fine.
Donating to causes that are currently not well known and where spending resources now to get the public and policy to pay attention to it sooner also seems like a great donation opportunity.
Related: Importance, Tractability and Neglectedness Framework – EA Forum