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21 comments on Can New York Replicate Water Success with Energy
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Which is a perfect excuse for naysayers to make it out like improvements are completely impossible. Let's try to at least have the semblance of optimism and make attempts to improve efficiency, rather than throwing up our hands and painting it as all being a cleverly disguised shell game.
It's called Jevons paradox.
Increases in efficiency have a (positive) income effect, which over time overcomes the (negative) substitution effect (away from the higher priced commodity). You have more money, you consume more.
You certainly see that in cars. When I was growing up, 2 cars per household was unusual. Now it is the norm. You also see it in Total Vehicle Miles travelled (VMT), which as has been shown well on this blog, rises with GDP, with very little fluctuation (only in the severe energy price rise of 1980/ recession, did it slip).
It's also called 'Systems Thinking' or 'Systems Dynamics'. See Jon Sterman's website at MIT, or anything by Jay Forrester. Or 'The Fifth Discipline' by Peter Senge. Every action, in a system, has feedback effects-- some negative, some positive.
A simple example. More global warming will lead to more use of air conditioning, which will accelerate global warming-- a positive feedback loop.
Elizabeth Kolbert also has a profile of Amory Lovins in this week's New Yorker, which raises that point, and which Lovins doesn't really deal with.
We need to see the problem systemically, not just point by point.
It is not just pessimism, it is an understanding that the problem is big and total. We cannot solve the challenge of global warming just by becoming more efficient (although that is undoubtedly part of the solution) we have to find ways of producing energy that do not release CO2 into the atmosphere.
I agree, politically, the supposition that carbon taxes will simply drive American manufacturing offshore to places where there are no carbon taxes, will be used to prevent the introduction of carbon taxes.
In reality, the problem has been studied in some detail. Certain industry groups (aluminium smelting) have a very strong exposure to carbon taxes and may displace. But the effect is much lower for other groups (vs. say, the advantages of being close to your customers).
In reality, the biggest burden on much of US industry, relative to its competitors, is healthcare costs. No one is proposing that the US have less healthcare, to make it less competitive.