Jevons Paradox empirically disproves their solvency—increases in resource efficiency only exacerbate consumption, turning the aff.

The Jevons Paradox can be associated with the concept of ‘Malthusian instability’, an expression coined by Layzer (1988). Malthusian instability refers to metabolic systems which are able to reproduce themselves (all living systems). It indicates that when operating in favourable conditions, they will unavoidably surpass the carrying capacity of their environment. This entails that the resulting process of natural selection will determine a constant evolutionary stress on metabolic systems. That is, there is a natural tendency of living systems to ‘get in trouble’, and this is the mechanism that enhances their ability to adapt and become something else. At the level of the individual metabolic system, this Mathusian instability is made possible by the existence of activities that in energy terms provide a positive return. In technical jargon we can say that these activities are generating a positive feedback or an autocatalytic loop. For example, if you invest 10MJ to perform an activity and you get 100MJ in return from this activity, and then if you re-invest the 90MJ of energy profit in doing more of the same activity, then you will get a total energy return of 900MJ. It is well known that a positive feedback like this one cannot go on unchecked for a very long period of time. We can recall here the story of Zhu Yuan-Chang’s chessboard: if you put one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and keeping doubling the number each square, there would be an astronomical number of grains of rice required for one position even before the 64th square is reached. This metaphor says it all. Hypercycles, or positive autocatalytic loops, when operating without a coupled process of control (and damping), do not survive for long; they just blow up (Ulanowicz, 1986). On the other hand, positive autocatalytic loops are required to provide the required supply of energy for those activities that are useful, but that implies a net loss of energy. When researching the sustainability of the energetic metabolism of socioeconomic systems, Georgescu-Roegen introduced an analogous concept to define a typology of technology that can lead to Malthusian instability: the concept of ‘Promethean technology’ (or the viable energy technology). A technology is viable, just like a viable biological species, if and only if this technology can reproduce itself with a surplus of energy after being set up by the technology that is now in use (Georgescu-Roegen, 1978). According to this definition, the feasibility of a technology is not sufficient for defining its viability. For example, a technology for the direct use of solar energy, which implies a deficit in the overall balance of energy over its life-cycle assessment (since other types of energy coming from outside the direct use of solar technology are required for its operation), would be feasible, but not viable. According to Georgescu-Roegen, in human history we have had only three Promethean technologies: 1 husbandry (agriculture); 2 the mastery of fire; and 3 the steam engine (or more generally the mastery of internal combustion engines), coupled to fossil energy. These technologies share a common explosive characteristic: ‘with just the spark of a match we can set on fire a whole forest. This property, although not as violent, characterizes the other two Promethean recipes’ (Georgescu-Roegen, 1992). Land is the special fuel for agriculture. Fossil fuels are the special fuels for modern industry. As illustrated in Figure 5.1, due to the autocatalytic nature of Promethean technology, humans were able to get into the Malthusian instability trap quickly by depleting the special stocks of ‘fuels’ associated with these different technologies. In particular, the explosive characteristic of the petroleumbased metabolism of modern society, due to the abundant supply of high-quality oil in the past 50 years and the continuous supply of technological efficiency improvements, has been boosting the phenomena associated with the Jevons Paradox worldwide, as empirically shown in Chapter 4. The Jevons Paradox is an issue that is little known outside of a few academic circles. However, the topic has taken on a new importance in this era of high energy prices, increased environmental awareness and concern over peak oil. At present, oil is the source of energy for nearly all the products that we consume. However, if the twilight of oil, vividly described by M. Simmons (2005), is really approaching in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East, oil producers will no longer be able to supply as much as the world will need, and we should start considering an alternative energy scenario to the conventional petroleum-based one. Looking at Figure 5.1, one would expect that a quick inversion of the trends of energy consumption should take place soon, since exponential growth in the pace of consumption of resources cannot take place for a long period of time within a finite planet. Unfortunately, looking at the expected energy demand associated with economic growth (Figure 5.2), things appear to get worse in the future. In particular, developing countries in Asia are projected to have an annual growth rate of 5.4 per cent from 2004 to 2030 (Ito, 2007). According to Luft (2007), 58 per cent of China’s oil imports come from the Middle East now and this share will grow to 70 per cent by 2015. China’s concern for its growing dependence on oil imports has led to its active involvement in exploration and production in places like Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Sudan, West Africa, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Canada. But China is not the only actor thirsty for oil in Asia; other countries, including India, are projected to be major contributors to the world’s energy demand. In fact, India and China are estimated to account for approximately 70 per cent of the energy consumption in Asia over this 30-year time period (Ito, 2007). These projections should be a concern for many people. The progressive reduction of oil reserves will force the world to turn to coal, natural gas and unconventional sources of oil such as heavy oil, shale oil, oil sands and tar sands. However, the supply of these energy sources is also limited, and the quality of many of them is much lower than that of current sources of oil. Nevertheless, while the world awaits a technological solution to the energy crisis, these alternative fossil energy sources will be consumed at an increased pace, creating an enormous amount of damage to the environment. Those alternative energy sources that do not rely on fossil energy are impractical at the moment because of their low energy return on investment (EROI) when considering their whole life-cycle assessment. In energy analysis EROI is the ratio between the quantity of energy delivered to society by an energy system and the quantity of energy used directly and indirectly in the delivery process. This index has been introduced and used in quantitative energy analysis (Cleveland et al, 1984; Hall et al, 1986; Cleveland, 1992). For example, the low EROI of nuclear power is due to the costs of mining and enriching the required fuel, building new plants and CONCLUSION 175 Figure 5.1 The major discontinuity in the evolution of humankind due to the massive use of Promethean technologies decommissioning old plants, plus handling and storing (practically for ever) nuclear wastes. The same problem of too low an EROI exists for biofuels and photovoltaic technologies. This is to say, for the moment many of the proposed technological alternatives to fossil energy are not viable technologies; they are only currently feasible because they are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Yet traditional economic theory tells us not to worry, the increased price of these energy sources as their supplies diminish will lead to new technological sources of energy. The information that has been provided in this book, from the historical overview to the theoretical and empirical implications, has illustrated that the Jevons Paradox is a very real threat to world energy security, as well as to the environment. Then, one may rightly ask, what is the solution? Should we stop looking for energy efficiency since this is a step in the wrong direction? It is not our intention in this book to condemn technology or to suggest the ‘right’ way to go in relation to human sustainability based on scientific analysis. Rather, our purpose is to show that technology is not the cure-all that many people believe it to be. Technology can expand the option space for humans and by providing this service it represents an important complement to the energy-environment solution. For example, technological energy-efficient improvements such as hybrid cars may represent a crucial component of a different trajectory of evolution of the metabolism of households in developed countries. However, the adoption of hybrid cars per se will not solve the problem of the unsustainability of modern lifestyles if adopted by a world population of 9 billion people. If the energy-environment situation is to improve, consumers will need to change their behaviour patterns by including concern for the environment among the priorities determining their choices. In the same way, policymakers and other important stakeholders will need to accept the challenge implied by ‘the tragedy of change’ (as discussed in Chapter 3) which is typical of evolving systems. Humans have to accept losing something in order to be able to retain something else. The need to deal with the tragedy of change, which is unavoidably associated with evolution, is essential in order to be able to deal with the Jevons Paradox. The big problem with the tragedy of change is that choices related to sustainability are choices that require reflexivity – the willingness to change yourself in order to be able to co-evolve with other humans and the environment. Unfortunately, choices based on reflexivity are not welcome in our modern society, since they imply dealing with the need for changing and re-discussing our own identity while dealing with moral issues. For this reason, humans try first to go for choices that, rather than being based on reflexivity, are based on externalization. The neoclassical economic paradigm is a good example of this: within this paradigm what is relevant is the willingness to pay to develop silver bullets and policies capable of preserving our own identity for as long as possible. But this paradigm leads to a dangerous form of denial of the obvious fact that humans have a responsibility over the choices that are made. According to the neoclassical economic paradigm, the process of becoming of humankind should be driven by the market and technological progress. By accepting this paradigm we can just keep doing what we are doing without thinking or reflecting on the consequences of our choices. We believe that reflexivity is required to deal with the Jevons Paradox and is the only way to handle the issue of sustainability. Therefore, we hope that policymakers, the scientists giving them advice and other powerful stakeholders will take heed of the Jevons Paradox. In fact, the Jevons Paradox will always be with us, no matter what new energy sources and silver bullets we come up with in the future, especially when we discover another Promethean technology.