Philosophical Vegan Forum

Today I learned about a new term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Basically it's saying that increased energy efficiency leads to higher level of consumption, and that this increased level of consumption negates the environmental benefits of increased energy efficiency. Here's the article in which I discovered this problem: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2018/02/26/Energy-Efficiency-Curse/ (I found it by searching "planes without fossil fuels" on Google searching for "news")

Okay, I didn't really discovered it there, it was more of a more complete description of a concept I already had in mind. Like how anti-nuclearism goes hand in hand with frugality (at least when not advocated by climate change deniers who promote the use of fossil fuels) because unless they're completely delusional about the energy potential of renewables its advocates admit it will lead to a lower amount of energy available to the economy. I'm skeptical of anti-nuclearism because without either nuclear or fossil fuels I think we'll not have enough energy to maintain a good quality of life for everyone, and we'll have no choice but to lower human welfare beyond reasonable frugality, making other objectives like lifting countries from the third world out of poverty or transition to a world where humans are liberated from mandatory labor thanks to the automation of jobs out of range. And speaking about said automation, I fear that it has the potential to increase productivity even more and with humans having a higher amount of free time, which would lead to an overall consumption increase by a large amount, it could eventually lead to higher environmental damage and decreased sustainability. We could even see modern animal agriculture that way: modern plant agriculture is super efficient, but we produce so much that we have enough to waste a large part by feeding it to animals specifically bred for food with a low conversion ratio from plants to animals, and still have enough food overall to sustain the needs of the country's population. I'm pretty sure our grandparents didn't eat as much meat as humans do today in first world countries, so this increased meat consumption would be another symptom of the Jevons paradox.

I support technological advances that might make human life more sustainable and less damaging to the environment (hence why I searched about fossil fuel free planes), but at the same time I think the habits of humans will have to change too, if we want to make it easier to make human civilization more sustainable. We're already promoting that by stating the environmental benefits of veganism compared to the consumption of animal products after all. In another thread I made (http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3805) I suggested that we could reduce the overall number of cars (and thus their environmental impact) by giving people incentives to not own one thanks to electrically-assisted bikes (which people would own as a substitute for cars that's less environmentally costly to manufacturate and could replace them for some kinds of trips) and self-driving cars summonable through an application (which would be a service rather than something to be owned at least outside of rural areas). The path to making this a reality, however, would face serious social challenges, because it would change the way people move in a way that would probably not be as convenient as it is by just taking your own car.

In my views environmentalism is about finding compromises between human interests and environmental conservation, which if not done correctly might increase poverty, which goes against the immediate interests of humans, or reduce the sustainability of current civilization, and thus go against the interests of humans in the future. And the Jevons paradox adds another variable in that already complicated issue. We could achieve better sustainability using more efficient technology while adopting policies to avert the increased consumption following it, but how?

We can on the individual level improve efficiency and use less. On the societal level it could be possible through ideology alone, but seems unlikely without some strong social pressures (shame) that I don't think are possible unless we manage to find a way to calculate and publish people's pollution scores. Some weird scifi reputation system.

The trouble is that efficiency makes things cheaper, so we really need to promote good habits with taxes on emissions so people are driven to greater efficiency because energy is more expensive.
The benefit of doing it with a tax instead of incredibly wasteful and more expensive renewable infrastructure is that you then have the money to use for something. It'll drive people to affordable solutions like nuclear AND you can also subsidize good solutions to push change faster.

I wonder if we are reaching the top of the bell curve in terms of energy consumption. (At least in personal households, businesses are another matter)

PsYcHo wrote: ↑Sat Mar 03, 2018 11:36 pm I wonder if we are reaching the top of the bell curve in terms of energy consumption. (At least in personal households, businesses are another matter)

It makes sense to consider that there are diminishing returns with increased consumption. To take the coal efficiency example cited in the articles I linked in the OP, it inceased fuel consumption, but it was an important step into improving overall human welfare, because good living standards for everyone is something highly energy intensive. And nowadays such an increase in efficiency would be unlikely to increase the welfare of the average middle class people.

At the same time the industrial revolution led to increased human population, which may be considered as another symptom of the Jevons paradox... but also shows that the paradox isn't applicable the same way in every situation, because human population growth has already peaked in the first world, and is actually declining in some countries like Japan because there are less people born than dead every year there. That's due to the effects of increased wealth has on infant mortality, women's opportunities in life and birth control, a phenomenon known as demographic transition. In fact I've seen mentioned in a book (I don't remember the name) that the only countries expected to have more than two children per woman by 2100 are a few countries in Africa.

I already mentioned food prodution in the OP, but I could develop further. Food security used to not be a given, but thanks to the agricultural revolution it was made more accessible to the population thanks to the increased efficiency of agriculture. It also was a factor for increased human population, because the demographic transition was only in its infancy back then (number of births not lowered enough to make up for better survivals yet), so agricultural efficiency needed to catch on with the human population increase. Agriculture became more and more efficient over time, which was a factor in the demographic transition (it initially increased human population but made it later stabilize), which opened the door to democratization of animal products as everyday food for everyone because plant agricultural efficiency improved so much. Now it seems that both food security and democratization of animal products have peaked in the first world, and any effort outside of the third world is now about reducing the environmental impact of farming (like lower land use and carbon emissions), and the next step might to use biotechnology to remove our dependency on farmed animals in order to make animal products. Now if anything a manifestation of the Jevons paradox related to agricultural land use might be about liberated lands being used by humans for other non-farming human activities rather than rewilding, or farming for purposes other than food production.

Overall it's important to anticipate the consequences of increased efficiency, which can improve human welfare but also have undesirable environmental side effects.