Jevons paradox

>Energy-efficient lighting, such as LED bulbs, has become a popular solution to reduce energy consumption. However, it serves as a notable example of the Jevons Paradox. While LEDs significantly lower the cost of lighting per unit, this reduction often leads to increased usage. For instance, people may install more lights in their homes or businesses, use them for longer durations, or adopt decorative and outdoor lighting more extensively. As a result, the total energy consumption for lighting has not decreased…

It seems similar to anecdata as the US migrated from dialup to broadband internet services. In theory you could finish downloading everything you needed in a fraction of the time so the bandwidth should remain unused longer. In practice, people started downloading everything. I just need this Linux distribution but here's a dozen more I can now get in minutes and try out that were prohibitive to download before to experiment with but now aren't. People started downloading video game…

As much as I was glad to see lighting become more efficient, as someone who enjoys seeing the night sky I was worried what the impact of virtually free lighting would be. And indeed, at least in rural Ireland the proliferation of extremely bright uplights which are on all night has not been great for seeing the milky way. Similarly, I worry that if we ever _do_ get fully self-driving EV's it will only serve to make it comfortable to…

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…