Introduction to effective environmentalism
If you're new to effective environmentalism, this page will help you understand its core ideas and highlight promising solutions and ways you can contribute.
By Soemano Zeijlmans · Published 1/2025 · Updated 1/2025

Effective Environmentalism meetup at EAGx Berlin © author
Effective environmentalism is a movement that aims to tackle environmental problems, like climate change and air pollution, as effectively as possible. It is a version of environmentalism and the climate movement that draws inspiration from effective altruism, a movement that aims to find the best ways to help others.
Effective environmentalism is both a research field and a practical community. As a research field, it aims to identify the most impactful solutions to the world’s most pressing environmental problems. As a practical community, it acts on evidence and research to protect the environment effectively.
By thinking critically about the best actions we can take for stopping climate change, habitat loss, and air pollution, we can do far more to tackle the planetary crises. While charitable initiatives fail or are ineffective, some charities are hundreds or even thousands of times more effective than others. In an age where carbon offset providers greenwash their products and the United Nations emphasises your personal carbon footprint, we need bolder and systemic initiatives to change policies, drive innovations, and tackle pollution at scale.
Effective environmentalism isn’t about a specific set of solutions, but about a better way of thinking about doing good. Effective environmentalists aim to find exceptionally impactful ways to contribute to environmental problems. People inspired by effective environmentalism are working on projects such as enforcing air pollution regulation, a protein transition towards plant-based and cultivated meat, and scaling up the potential of geothermal energy.
What principles unite effective environmentalism?
Prioritisation
Our instincts about protecting the environment can sometimes mislead us - planting a single tree or cleaning up a local beach might feel just as or even more satisfying than supporting initiatives that prevent deforestation of thousands of acres. Scientists also call this scope neglect: humans have a poor intuition for understanding the scale of a problem or a solution.
Since some ways to help the environment are vastly more impactful than others, it’s crucial to use data, careful analysis, and evidence to prioritise actions that will help much more than others. Effective environmentalism is about finding and working on the best ways to tackle climate change and other environmental problems.
Some environmental solutions have exponentially greater impact than others, so it's crucial to use data and metrics to evaluate different interventions. Instead of being content with any environmental action, we should focus our limited resources on identifying and supporting the most effective ways to reduce emissions and protect ecosystems. By prioritising the most cost-effective actions we can take, we can achieve much more with the same resources.
Open truth-seeking
Rather than starting with a commitment to a particular environmental solution, technology, or advocacy approach, effective environmentalism is about remaining open to all potential pathways for protecting our planet. This means dedicating significant effort to analyzing different interventions – whether that's advocacy for carbon taxation, or clean energy innovation, or public campaigns – and being willing to follow the evidence where it leads. True environmental effectiveness requires maintaining genuine curiosity about new research and perspectives, questioning our assumptions about what works, and being ready to dramatically shift our approach when better solutions emerge.
Being open to evidence or ideas that suggest that your initial approach wasn’t effective is key to achieving maximum impact. For example, after impact evaluator Giving Green researched and published the most cost-effective carbon offset options, they realised that funding non-profits to advocate for policy change and innovation is much more cost-effective than carbon offsets. Instead of continuing to convince people to buy certain carbon offsets, they instead started researching and listing the world’s most cost-effective non-profit organisations.
Considering humans and animals
We need to make sure that climate and environmental action actually benefits humans. The point of environmentalism is to maintain a safe and habitable Earth for humans and animals alike. Globally, 1.2 billion people lack access to energy or breathe in smoke from unsafe cooking equipment. Leaving them without access to energy is not a viable climate strategy. Well-intended advice to switch out beef with chicken can cause vastly more animal suffering, because we need more chickens to produce the same amount of meat. If tackling climate change forces people to stay in poverty or increases animal suffering, then what’s the point?
Luckily, there are many actions we can take to protect the environment, while not harming or even improving human development. For example, growing the economies of low and middle-income countries with renewable energy, while tackling corruption-prone coal contracts, benefits both climate change and human development.
Climate action presents an opportunity to eliminate the large-scale suffering of farmed animals, too. Animal products are by far the most polluting types of food. Accelerating the transition to plant-based and cultivated meat would also reduce the number of intensively farmed animals.
Collaborative spirit
Collaboration often leads to greater impact. Helping others increase their positive impacts by sharing opportunities, providing constructive feedback, and keeping each other motivated is essential for a vibrant and impactful environmental movement.
This requires having a friendly, open, and welcoming environment where people feel comfortable sharing different ideas, are open to the ideas of others, and where perspectives are evaluated based on their merit. We encourage cooperation and collaboration between people with different backgrounds, values, and ways of thinking and working.
What are some examples of effective environmentalism in practice?
Effective environmentalism is about an approach to doing good, not about a specific set of solutions. However, environmentalists inspired by effective altruism have found some exceptionally promising fields of work, of which we’ll highlight a few below.
Developing next-generation geothermal energy
Why this issue?
Geothermal energy can supply a constant source of heat and electricity without needing fossil fuels. This is an important addition to solar and wind, as the sun often doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. Certain new types of geothermal energy, such as enhanced and advanced geothermal, are promising options to roll-out geothermal energy faster and in more places where it was previously economically or physically impossible.

Despite its potential, geothermal energy is much more neglected than solar and wind. Because of the law of diminishing returns, it is likely that one extra person working on geothermal or one extra person donating to advance geothermal has a much higher impact than an additional person working on or donating to advancing solar and wind. Solar and wind, too, were once expensive sources of energy with some niche applications. Because of some motivated inventors and supportive policies, solar and wind were able to rapidly scale up and become much cheaper. With targeted efforts, we can repeat that success story for geothermal energy.
What has been done?
Founders Pledge and Giving Green, two charity evaluators and grantmakers inspired by effective altruism, have funded non-profits that support international expansion of geothermal energy. The year 2024 may have been a “breakout year” for geothermal energy, with the US House of Representatives passing major geothermal bills and companies hitting important milestones. Also in 2024, the non-profit Project Innerspace released “GeoMaps™” with information about the potential of geothermal energy in North America and Asia.
Accelerating the protein transition
Why this issue?
Food systems are responsible for about 26% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. This makes the food sector one of the most polluting industries. More than half of these emissions come from livestock, fisheries, and animal feed, even though we eat much fewer animal products than plant-based foods. Animal products cause far more greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram than plant-based foods. With meat production rising rapidly around the world, it becomes a priority to accelerate a transition towards plant-based foods and cultivated meat.
What has been done?
The Good Food Institute, a non-profit organisation inspired by the ideas of effective environmentalism, has been instrumental for innovation and global adoption of sustainable proteins. It has worked to make sustainable proteins a key priority for the Indian government, drive investments in the European Union, and obtain U.S. government support for the protein transition.

Reducing air pollution
Why this issue?
Indoor or outdoor air pollution is one of the leading risk factors for death, especially in low-income countries. It increases your risk of heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, lung infections, diabetes, and COPD. One in ten deaths, globally, is at least partially the result of air pollution.
Despite its massive impacts, air pollution gets only a fraction of the attention and funding of other major health problems. Relative to the burden of the problem, outdoor air pollution receives only a tiny fraction of official development assistance compared to HIV/AIDS and malnutrition, and even these challenges are still in need for more funding. Air pollution appears to be an incredibly neglected problem, especially in areas with poor air quality.

Luckily, there are many actions we can take to drastically cut air pollution. Peru, for example, has cut its air pollution by 90% in some cities by improving the accessibility, convenience, and safety of public transport. For example, Peruvian cities implemented Bus Rapid Transit systems which allows buses to drive on dedicated lanes, bypassing traffic congestion.
What has been done?
Open Philanthropy, a grantmaking foundation inspired by the ideas of effective altruism, has funded universities and a think tank to install simple air quality sensors throughout South Asia. The collected data helps design, implement, and enforce air pollution abatement action, even in countries where environmental advocacy and activism is often difficult.
How can you take action?
People interested in effective environmentalism most often attempt to make an impact in one or more of the following ways:
Finding a career that meaningfully helps tackle environmental problems and is a good fit for people’s skills and interests. Choosing an impactful career is one of the most meaningful decisions you can take to contribute to tackling global challenges.
Donating to the world’s most effective climate charities, as evaluated by independent researchers. On our charities page, we highlight the most cost-effective charities according to researchers at Giving Green and Founders Pledge. We also list some organisations that help with effective giving in your country.
Starting new organisations that tackle environmental problems in important spaces where no-one is working yet.
Helping to grow the effective environmentalism movement.
This is not an exhaustive list. Depending on your personal circumstances, your own interests, and your background, you may find other cost-effective ways to contribute.
If you want to learn more about effective environmentalism, we’ve compiled many resources on our website, such as podcasts, books, and articles.