I am co-authoring a book introducing EA to a Christian audience. The concept is quite straightforward, essentially a Doing Good Better with Bible verses and stories from Christian tradition to emphasise that Christians can be EAs too.
There will be a chapter on cause prioritisation, and I am looking for a case study which has the same intuitive appeal as PlayPumps, but illustrates the importance of prioritising between causes rather than between interventions. The ideal example would be one where there is a lot of hype and interest around a particular cause area which ends up being a bit of a waste of time, or at least obviously less pressing than other cause areas.
It would be even better if we had examples of people pursuing that cause area effectively, to illustrate the difference between an intervention which achieves its goals well and goals that are actually worth achieving. This would make the point about cause prioritisation nicely.
Some imperfect possibilities we've thought of so far: plastic waste, heritage conservation, university scholarships, funding alma maters, arts & culture stuff. As you can tell, none of these are great examples as many readers will believe these to be good things to fund (sometimes with good reason), whereas few people would defend PlayPumps once they realise how they (don't) work.
Grateful for any suggestions, however niche!
Prohibition is a great example. It covers:
-alcohol
-marijuana
-LSD
-opioids
-etc
It might be a good idea to have some restrictions on some of these!
A key insight from PlayPumps is that the details matter -- kids did not enjoy the "Play" part of the pumping system. It seems a little odd (almost Orwellian) the inventor/promoter ignored this
Prohibition is a super interesting one I hadn't considered, thanks!
GMOs/nuclear power are interesting but I'd suspect it's unlikely to engage readers' emotions much. I.e. I doubt they'll leave thinking 'wow, what a waste of time to oppose GMOs!' because there is something quite intuitively unappealing about them. Might be worth a mention though, even if not as the key case study.
The others feel a little bit politicised, even though I agree!