People view technology as a deus ex machina that will enable them to keep doing what they're doing but magically it won't pollute any more.
For example, many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. The "logic" doesn't work, but they just want a story to help them sleep at night while they read that the arctic is 45 degrees above normal, knowing somewhere in the backs of their minds that the jet fuel they paid to burn to move their share of a plane around the world and back contributed more to that climate change than nearly anyone in hundreds of thousands of years of human existence.
Technology has helped humanity out of many problems, as have markets and economic growth. Now we're facing problems that technology, markets, and growth are causing (extinctions, resource depletion, pollution, litter, climate change, etc), Jevon's paradox contributing significantly (the tragedy of the commons and principle agent problem being others) and people haven't realized that applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems.
Technology can buy us time, but systems change generally requires changing the goals and beliefs driving the system, which are social and emotional issues, not technological.
Technology for many serves the role religion used to play. Like God, technology is expected to always provide.
This is unscientific, as science understands the notion of local maxima, diminishing returns, and so on, whereas people worshipping technology as some non exhaustive resource, don't.
And let's not even go into resource depletion, or the odds and difficulties space travel (e.g. when talking about colonizing Mars and so on), which are waved away because "technology will find a way".
The idea that in this or that large-scale problem technology might not find a way, because it depends on limited resources (our cognitive skills, laws of physics limitations, scarcity of materials, energy costs, etc) is not considered at all, even though it's totally possible. The attitude is "surely, since we went from the caves to cars and the moon, we can go anywhere and everywhere".
> many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying.
That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people?
>applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems.
While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electricity. Driving electric cars doesn't lead to more driving. And it seems that switching jets to synthetic/biofuels won't lead to more flying.
Jevon's paradox does not apply everywhere, just where there's supply restricted usage.
Further, technology is disconnecting carbon intensity and even energy intensity from GDP. The connection between these was an article of faith for prior generations, both from conservationists and economic conservatives, but it is changing now.
We need to rethink plans in light of these changing fundamentals: Jevon's paradox happens many places but not everywhere, and economic activity is going to be disconnected from carbon intensity.
One can observe that, on a global level, CO2 emissions have never been higher.
In other words, not only have we not made progress, we have gone backwards. I believe Jevon's paradox is a major cause, along with a lack of understanding of it.
A clearer way of presentint Jevon's paradox is: price decline, usage increases. Which is such a standard economic statement that it hardly needs saying. The unintuitive part of the paradox is that we measure the price of a unit of energy, not what we can do with it.
I think the best way to combat this is to negotiate for countries to implement a tax on carbon.
Negotiating for emissions reductions directly causes problems: you are asking countries to slow their growth. So, they will look for solutions. Increasing efficieny is the natural way, to get more use out of the CO2 you're allowed to use. But then....every unit of CO2 is suddenly more tempting.
Hence, our emissions have gone up, not down. There's just so much you can do with it now!
If countries agreed to tax carbon, that tax would deal with the externality caused by carbon emissions, and give an incentive to develop non-carbon electricity.
This is so obviously the market based solution that I am baffled more people don't advocate for it. It doesn't even have to raise overall taxes. You just cut the income tax or corporate tax to compensate.
People sometimes confuse the Jevons Paradox with rebound effects in general. Reminder: "The Jevons paradox occurs when the rebound effect is greater than 100%, exceeding the original efficiency gains."
"People save on electricity by replacing incandescent lights with LED lights, and also make their living rooms 25% brighter at the same time" is an example of a rebound effect. Some of the efficiency gain on the input side is offset by increased output consumption. But it's not an example of the Jevons Paradox. If you replace light sources with ones that are 5x as efficient, you'd have to also use more than 5x as much lighting as before to qualify as a Jevons Paradox.
The Jevons Paradox is a specific, fairly narrow, empirically observable phenomenon. Fatalistic notions that technological efficiency improvements can't reduce per-capita energy consumption, "because of Jevons Paradox," are not empirically supported. Energy rebound effects are common, but when the rebound is less than 100% (as it usually is) then there are real net energy savings and it's not a Jevons Paradox.
I suppose a nice example would be city lights. There was an article lately about how electrical consumption for city lights increased despite the switch to LEDs.
Can't quite find the article though, but here is one about light pollution increasing (which does not necessarily correlate with electrical consumption, but still):
I have to say that the amount of new light installed is truly huge and interfering with astronomical viewing. Don't bother telling someone to remember to turn off the lights anymore either... they'll look at you like you're a martian.
So, if, for instance, the price of energy dropped to zero, people's consumption of it would become infinite. And ditto for anything else that people use. For some reason I find that rather improbable.
But why would we need to reduce consumption? We need emissions tax -- a tax proportional to the environmental cost. If power consumption carried little or no environmental cost, we'd want to use a huge amount, and that wouldn't be an issue.
Coal consumption increased steadily since 1865 and is almost at its all time high right now. There was a tiny dip in the last few years, but oil consumption is still increasing.
Are cars going to be an example of this? New electric cars are more fuel efficient but they will have so much processing and laser power (for autonomous driving) that they will actually consume more energy.
Applying this paradox in reverse (which is paraphrasing the wiki article) - if introducing energy efficiency measures causes energy use to go down then someone needs to ask probing questions about what is going on. Increased efficiency should be linked, all else equal, to increased use of a resource.
It's not hard to find examples where this "rule" doesn't seem to hold. If you give me water heated for free, I may shower twice on some days, but I will not take infinite hot showers. If you gave me shoes that cause less ablation of the pavement I walk on, I wouldn't find other ways to remove the same amount of material, I would simply use up less resources wherever I go, being none the wiser.
Introducing energy efficiency measures does cause usage to go down in the short term, but assuming demand is elastic, then it will go up over time as people consume more.
Where Jevons Paradox has most utility is showing the futility of unilateral individual action. Don't think you are doing anything to help the environment by turning off that light switch.
If you look at the inelastic demand graph, in the "cause" section of the wiki, it answers your question. Even if there's increased use of a resource, total energy consumption often still goes down, because each resource now consumes less energy.
[+] [-] spodek|8 years ago|reply
For example, many think that solar powered planes will enable flying without pollution, which somehow justifies their current flying. The "logic" doesn't work, but they just want a story to help them sleep at night while they read that the arctic is 45 degrees above normal, knowing somewhere in the backs of their minds that the jet fuel they paid to burn to move their share of a plane around the world and back contributed more to that climate change than nearly anyone in hundreds of thousands of years of human existence.
Technology has helped humanity out of many problems, as have markets and economic growth. Now we're facing problems that technology, markets, and growth are causing (extinctions, resource depletion, pollution, litter, climate change, etc), Jevon's paradox contributing significantly (the tragedy of the commons and principle agent problem being others) and people haven't realized that applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems.
Technology can buy us time, but systems change generally requires changing the goals and beliefs driving the system, which are social and emotional issues, not technological.
[+] [-] coldtea|8 years ago|reply
This is unscientific, as science understands the notion of local maxima, diminishing returns, and so on, whereas people worshipping technology as some non exhaustive resource, don't.
And let's not even go into resource depletion, or the odds and difficulties space travel (e.g. when talking about colonizing Mars and so on), which are waved away because "technology will find a way".
The idea that in this or that large-scale problem technology might not find a way, because it depends on limited resources (our cognitive skills, laws of physics limitations, scarcity of materials, energy costs, etc) is not considered at all, even though it's totally possible. The attitude is "surely, since we went from the caves to cars and the moon, we can go anywhere and everywhere".
[+] [-] epistasis|8 years ago|reply
That's an incredibly silly thing to think, where do you come across such people?
>applying more of what solved other problems isn't helping but exacerbating current problems.
While possible in principle, I don't see that happening. Installing LED lights doesn't lead to people using more electricity. Driving electric cars doesn't lead to more driving. And it seems that switching jets to synthetic/biofuels won't lead to more flying.
Jevon's paradox does not apply everywhere, just where there's supply restricted usage.
Further, technology is disconnecting carbon intensity and even energy intensity from GDP. The connection between these was an article of faith for prior generations, both from conservationists and economic conservatives, but it is changing now.
We need to rethink plans in light of these changing fundamentals: Jevon's paradox happens many places but not everywhere, and economic activity is going to be disconnected from carbon intensity.
[+] [-] graeme|8 years ago|reply
In other words, not only have we not made progress, we have gone backwards. I believe Jevon's paradox is a major cause, along with a lack of understanding of it.
A clearer way of presentint Jevon's paradox is: price decline, usage increases. Which is such a standard economic statement that it hardly needs saying. The unintuitive part of the paradox is that we measure the price of a unit of energy, not what we can do with it.
I think the best way to combat this is to negotiate for countries to implement a tax on carbon.
Negotiating for emissions reductions directly causes problems: you are asking countries to slow their growth. So, they will look for solutions. Increasing efficieny is the natural way, to get more use out of the CO2 you're allowed to use. But then....every unit of CO2 is suddenly more tempting.
Hence, our emissions have gone up, not down. There's just so much you can do with it now!
If countries agreed to tax carbon, that tax would deal with the externality caused by carbon emissions, and give an incentive to develop non-carbon electricity.
This is so obviously the market based solution that I am baffled more people don't advocate for it. It doesn't even have to raise overall taxes. You just cut the income tax or corporate tax to compensate.
[+] [-] philipkglass|8 years ago|reply
"People save on electricity by replacing incandescent lights with LED lights, and also make their living rooms 25% brighter at the same time" is an example of a rebound effect. Some of the efficiency gain on the input side is offset by increased output consumption. But it's not an example of the Jevons Paradox. If you replace light sources with ones that are 5x as efficient, you'd have to also use more than 5x as much lighting as before to qualify as a Jevons Paradox.
The Jevons Paradox is a specific, fairly narrow, empirically observable phenomenon. Fatalistic notions that technological efficiency improvements can't reduce per-capita energy consumption, "because of Jevons Paradox," are not empirically supported. Energy rebound effects are common, but when the rebound is less than 100% (as it usually is) then there are real net energy savings and it's not a Jevons Paradox.
[+] [-] grondilu|8 years ago|reply
Can't quite find the article though, but here is one about light pollution increasing (which does not necessarily correlate with electrical consumption, but still):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/light-pollution-increasing-arou...
[+] [-] gameswithgo|8 years ago|reply
Its something like a 6x reduction in electric usage vs incandescent, how would people manage to use 6x more light?
OR was this a switch from CFL to LED that led to more usage?
[+] [-] kurthr|8 years ago|reply
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20082015/lighting-paradox...
I have to say that the amount of new light installed is truly huge and interfering with astronomical viewing. Don't bother telling someone to remember to turn off the lights anymore either... they'll look at you like you're a martian.
[+] [-] oftenwrong|8 years ago|reply
this?
[+] [-] erebus_rex|8 years ago|reply
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good
[+] [-] anonytrary|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woodandsteel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcg|8 years ago|reply
But I expect that in general, for most things humans consume, as efficiency has increased, consumption has increased too.
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkmighty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingofhdds|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soniman|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cproctor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hodl|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] roenxi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topbarcolor|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danieltillett|8 years ago|reply
Where Jevons Paradox has most utility is showing the futility of unilateral individual action. Don't think you are doing anything to help the environment by turning off that light switch.
[+] [-] whack|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qubex|8 years ago|reply