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Yes, some felonious crypto Bro was really into it. But, effective altruism is still a compelling idea: we should try to be as useful as possible with our giving, and we should quantify this. How does buying Cooling Credits compare to other things we might spend our disposable income on?
We'll divide this into 2 buckets: where we are, and where we will go.
Now
Cooling Credits cost ~$1 to purchase, and we're in for ~$.20 to deliver. Most other "keep world from cooking" efforts are less transparent about their costs than us, so we'll do the math for retail prices:
We're not as good as we look at first... and neither are voluntary credits.
We last a year, and voluntary carbon credits are evaluated like they last 100. Or, at least they do if they happen: an estimated 90%+ are fake! So, translating to "real ton-years," we get:
$25 per ton * 10% probability real / 100 years = $2.50 per real ton-year
Assuming you do direct air capture and storage effectively, 100 years is on the *lower* end. There are some issues (like oil companies buying carbon capture companies and pumping co2 into the ground for improved fracking), but let's take them at their word:
$490 per ton / 100 ton-years = $4.90 per ton-year
So, we're looking pretty good in comparison to planting trees or capturing carbon. But, we're just getting started;)
Coming Soon
After a long time looking, we found the material Loon used to make their balloons. Here's one of theirs, readying for launch:
We bought enough to put up some *very big* balloons. We also have access to a machine capable of fabricating these balloons.
Using the technology we have, we'll get to well under $.01 per Cooling Credit. Not bednets, but close:
We will put up 1 ton of so2 for ~$6350 in materials. This puts us at approximately the same Disability-Adjusted Life Year benefit as bednets... and this is just on the mortality from temperature! For this calculation, we're placing 0 value on reduction in risk of AMOC collapse or any other tipping point; ditto with the reduced likelihood of geopolitical conflict in a world where we're rendering large swathes of countries uninhabitable.
Cooling Earth
Making the balloons like Loon did, using material we've already sourced, we can bring global temperatures back to sane levels. 4 million tons per year will cost $25.4 billion in materials, and this will drop global temperatures by ~.1C.
How does this compare to trees and direct air capture?
Also: it will cost you 12 times as much arable land as exists in the world for the trees. Direct air capture? Over 4.9 times global GDP to build the plants.
And -.5C? Both trees and direct air capture combined cannot hit -.5C with anything even remotely resembling today's known technologies. Stratospheric aerosols? -.5C costs between $100 and $200 billion per year... assuming Pintubo doesn't do it again for free.
By spending $200 billion, we prevent ~$1.3-2 trillion in economic losses per year. More importantly, we prevent hundreds of thousands of human deaths + protect many species from extinction.
Consider this a maximum cost: when we figure out how to reuse balloons or some nation-state decides to declare war on global warming using existing supersonic aircraft for delivery of Cooling Credits, actual cost will be materially less. Solar geoengineering is the only realistic solution to global warming.
You can run your own SAI simulations, and feel free to check our (+ chatgpt's) math here. Chart data here.
Buy bednets if you want... but don't forget to Cool Earth.