Quote:
Originally Posted by sendler
Jevons' paradox is applicable to technology advances. Some of which bring about an improved efficiency over a previous machine or process. But has more historically been applied regarding new machines and processes which replaced muscle power with fossil energy inputs. New machines and gadgets that use energy to do what humans and beasts used to do manually. So technology advancing is a vector for more primary energy use.
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Humans can do .6kWh of work in an eight hour day. But the energy footprint of an average person in the USA has an additional 200 energy slaves (mostly fossil) tied up in their day to day existence. Due to all of these "advancements".
Of course we (USA) are now 50 times wealthier than kings and queens of 400 years ago.
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Some of the contemporaneous use of his paradox (Guy McPherson),is that if you reduce energy consumption for a given technology,people will just use more of it,cancelling out any gain.So why bother?
This would encourage a conversation about inverse-rate scale pricing.
Either Earth is important or it is not.