Where Help Counts Most

Why compare causes at all

Time, money and attention are limited. The same effort can do very different amounts of good depending on where it goes. This page compares fifteen causes openly, so you can see the reasoning and weigh it yourself. It does not declare one right answer.

“The best possible world” here means: the human needs from the Personal Guide (health and energy, safety, connection, freedom, meaning) met for everyone, within the planet’s limits, and fairly between people, generations and sentient beings.

The five questions

Each cause gets a score from 1 to 5 on each question. All five count equally, so the maximum is 25. For “What you can do”, actions that need money count less than actions anyone can take, such as daily choices, time and voting.

Question	What it asks	A 5 means
Scale	How much would solving it improve those needs, for how many, for how long?	Very many lives, for a very long time
Neglect	How few people and how little money already work on it?	Very little attention for its size
Tractability	Does extra effort actually change something?	Proven, affordable ways to make progress
Knock-on effect	Does progress here make other causes easier?	It unlocks many other causes
What you can do	Can an ordinary person help: time, money, vote, career, daily choices?	Anyone can act on it, often daily, without needing money

The ranking

#	Cause	Scale	Neglect	Tractability	Knock-on	You	Total
1	Food, animals and nature	5	4	3	4	4	20
2	Renewable energy	5	1.5	4.5	5	3	19
2	Use only the resources we need	5	4	2	4	4	19
4	Global health and extreme poverty	4.5	2.5	5	3.5	3	18.5
4	Support people’s generic goals	3.5	2	3	5	5	18.5
4	Education	4	2	3.5	5	4	18.5
7	Mental health	3.5	3.5	3.5	3.5	4	18
8	Catastrophic risks	5	4.5	2.5	3	2	17
8	Reliable information and democracy	4	3	2	5	3	17
10	Biodiversity beyond food	4	3.5	3	3	3	16.5
11	Basic-needs budget	4.5	3	2	4	2	15.5
11	Automation, AI and work	4	3	2.5	3.5	2.5	15.5
13	Cap inheritance, fair start for everyone	3	4	2.5	3.5	2	15
13	Peace and conflict prevention	4	3.5	2	4	1.5	15
15	Migration	3.5	3	2	3	2	13.5

Fifteen causes: the six steps of the Society Guide roadmap, plus nine causes from the wider list.

The gaps are small. Anything within two points of another cause is effectively a tie, given how rough the judgements are. The useful signal is the broad grouping, not the exact order.

How widely a cause is drawn also affects its score: broader causes score higher, because they reach more people and offer more ways to help. We kept each cause at a similar size, a field with its own organisations, so they can be compared fairly. Where two causes shared the same action, we merged them, so the same good isn’t counted twice (food and farmed animals).

Why each cause scores as it does

Food, animals and nature (20)

How we produce food and use animals, with two routes: less meat, more plants (climate, land back to nature, health) and better lives for farmed animals (how the animals still farmed are treated).

• Scale 5: food systems cause roughly a quarter to a third of greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC AR6); livestock uses most farmland while giving a small share of calories (Our World in Data); many tens of billions of land animals are farmed each year (FAO), most in intensive conditions. Part of this score depends on how much weight you give animals’ experiences.
• Neglect 4: little funding compared to that scale. Work on eating less meat also helps animals; what stays most neglected is improving how farmed animals are treated.
• Tractability 3: eating habits change slowly, food is tied to culture and family traditions, and eating well without meat takes some nutrition knowledge (2.5). Corporate welfare campaigns, on the other hand, have a strong record of winning concrete changes, such as ending cage eggs (3.5).
• Knock-on 4: freed land stores carbon and gives room back to nature.
• You 4: everyone chooses what they eat, but it isn’t easy, especially in families: different tastes, children who refuse new food, one cook who doesn’t want to make two meals. The action with the most effect per euro is donating to groups that run corporate welfare campaigns; charity evaluators such as Animal Charity Evaluators rate these among the most effective. Better labels and EU consultations are easy, with a modest effect.
• Less, not none: most of the climate and land benefit comes from eating clearly less meat, especially beef. Going fully plant-based needs planning and a vitamin B12 supplement, and children, pregnant women and older people need extra care. Eating less meat is the realistic first step and carries few health risks. For animals, chicken and eggs matter most: they involve far more animals per meal than beef.

Renewable energy (19)

• Scale 5 and knock-on 5: energy powers everything else.
• Tractability 4.5: solar and wind costs collapsed over the past decade.
• Neglect 1.5: clean energy already draws around two trillion dollars a year (IEA). Extra effort adds less here, which is why it isn’t first despite its importance.
• You 3: switching supplier, insulation, voting; the big choices are made by governments and companies.

Use only the resources we need (19)

• Scale 5: touches all the planet’s limits at once.
• Neglect 4: most policy still aims at growth.
• Tractability 2: works against current economic habits, and savings are often spent elsewhere (the rebound effect).
• Knock-on 4 and You 4: every person can act on it daily, and using less eases every other environmental cause.

Global health and extreme poverty (18.5)

• Scale 4.5: hundreds of thousands still die of malaria each year, mostly young children (WHO), and hundreds of millions live in extreme poverty (World Bank).
• Neglect 2.5: large aid budgets and foundations already work on it.
• Tractability 5: the best-proven cause. Bed nets, vaccines and cash transfers are tested in careful studies, and a few thousand euros can save a life (GiveWell estimates).
• Knock-on 3.5: healthy children learn better, and healthier, richer families have fewer children.
• You 3: the most effective action is donating to rigorously evaluated charities, and small amounts go far, but not everyone can afford it. Without money, voting for development aid is what remains.

Support people’s generic goals (18.5)

• Scale 3.5: it works directly on everyday needs (health, connection, meaning) for very many people, but mostly for people whose basic needs are already met, and the evidence is still limited. Its larger, indirect effect is counted under knock-on.
• Neglect 2: education and self-improvement are large, crowded fields.
• Tractability 3.
• Knock-on 5: many people know what better choices look like but have no time or headspace for them. When life feels busy, food, money and energy choices become whatever is quickest. Helping people get their lives in order gives them room for better choices in every other cause.
• You 5: anyone can start today. The link from personal goals to societal change still needs better sources.
• Overlap: with education and mental health. Together, education, mental health and support for people’s goals give people the room and ability to make better choices in every other cause. We keep them separate because different people and organisations work on each.

Education (18.5)

• Scale 4: education shapes health, income, freedom and the choices people make for their whole lives, everywhere. Millions of children are still out of school, more girls than boys in the poorest countries (UNESCO), and many more are in school without learning the basics.
• Neglect 2: one of the largest public budgets in almost every country.
• Tractability 3.5: proven, affordable programmes exist, especially in poorer countries; improving education systems as a whole is slower.
• Knock-on 5: it underpins almost every other cause: better health, higher incomes, informed voting, better choices about food and resources, and, by choice, smaller families.
• You 4: much of learning happens at home: reading with children, talking about the world, showing curiosity, helping with homework. People can also tutor or volunteer, and vote for good schools. Donations help in poorer countries.
• Overlap: with mental health and support for people’s goals. Together, education, mental health and support for people’s goals give people the room and ability to make better choices in every other cause. We keep them separate because different people and organisations work on each.

Mental health (18)

• Scale 3.5: around one in eight people live with a mental disorder (WHO), and it touches every human need the Personal Guide describes.
• Neglect 3.5: a small share of health budgets, especially in poorer countries.
• Tractability 3.5: low-cost talking therapies delivered by trained non-specialists have shown good results.
• Knock-on 3.5: people who feel well can do more for others.
• You 4: support around you, your own habits, and donations.
• Overlap: with education and support for people’s goals. Together, education, mental health and support for people’s goals give people the room and ability to make better choices in every other cause. We keep them separate because different people and organisations work on each.

Catastrophic risks: pandemics, nuclear war, advanced AI (17)

• Scale 5: these could harm everyone alive and every future generation. Around twelve thousand nuclear warheads still exist (SIPRI), and COVID-19 showed what a pandemic can do.
• Neglect 4.5: very little spending compared to the stakes.
• Tractability 2.5: progress is possible (biosecurity, arms control, AI safety research) but hard to see and measure.
• Knock-on 3: avoiding a catastrophe protects all other progress, but doesn’t move other causes forward.
• You 2: mostly through careers, voting and donations.
• If you care most about the long-term future, this cause rises to the top.

Reliable information and democracy (17)

• Scale 4 and knock-on 5: every other cause needs good public decisions.
• Neglect 3: some attention, little compared to the problem.
• Tractability 2: hard to fix and hard to measure.
• You 3: voting, checking sources before sharing, supporting independent journalism.

Biodiversity beyond food (16.5)

• Scale 4: around a million species are at risk of extinction (IPBES).
• Neglect 3.5, tractability 3: protected areas and restoration work when funded and enforced.
• Knock-on 3: healthy ecosystems support food, water and climate.
• You 3: supporting conservation, voting, and what you buy (wood, fish).
• Food and land use are already scored under step 2; this covers oceans, forests and pollution.

Basic-needs budget (15.5)

• Scale 4.5: a large effect on security and poverty, and it frees people to act on everything else.
• Tractability 2: pilots exist, but it is politically and financially hard.
• You 2: mostly voting and advocating.

Automation, AI and work (15.5)

• Scale 4: could change most jobs within a generation.
• Neglect 3, tractability 2.5: many people discuss it, few concrete plans exist.
• Knock-on 3.5: handled well, it frees time and lowers costs for everyone.
• You 2.5: learning new skills, voting.

Cap inheritance, fair start for everyone (15)

• Neglect 4: few work on it, mainly because it is unpopular.
• Tractability 2.5: a cap is more achievable than a ban.
• Knock-on 3.5: it can fund a starting capital for every young adult, and the basic-needs budget.
• You 2: voting and advocating.

Peace and conflict prevention (15)

• Scale 4 and knock-on 4: war undoes progress on almost every other cause.
• Neglect 3.5, tractability 2: mediation and peacekeeping can work, but outcomes depend on a few powerful actors.
• You 1.5: an ordinary person has little direct influence.

Migration (13.5)

• Scale 3.5: large for the people who move, and growing with climate change.
• Tractability 2: politically very divided.
• You 2: mostly voting and local welcome.
• It is mainly a force that shapes the future (see Which big forces are reshaping society?), so it is better tackled through its causes: climate, conflict and poverty.

How the ranking changes with your values

• If only size matters (leave out neglect): renewable energy moves to the top.
• If the long-term future matters most: catastrophic risks rise near the top.
• If animals count less than people: food, animals and nature drops slightly but stays near the top, on climate and land alone.
• If you want proof before you act: global health and poverty comes first.

What this means

Three groups stand out:

1. Daily choices with big effects: eating less meat and using only what we need. Anyone can start today.
2. Proven giving: global health and poverty, and campaigns for farmed animals. Small donations, measurable results.
3. Big, slow system changes: energy, information and democracy, catastrophic risks, fair sharing. Mostly through voting, careers and supporting the organisations already doing the work (see Who’s Working on This).

Scores are judgements by the HappyBein team, based on the sources named. They will be updated as the evidence changes.