Tech can’t solve environmental problems -- Jevons paradox
Alexander, 15- lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs at the University of Melbourne who wrote his PhD thesis on degrowth (Samuel Alexander, 2015, “Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits,” published by The Simplicity Institute, pg. 68-69)
This mainstream vision of how to achieve a sustainable world is coherent in theory, at best, but demonstrably it does not reflect empirical reality (see Alexander, 2014). Although many economies around the world are indeed getting better at producing commodities more cleanly and efficiently (a process known as ‘relative decoupling’), overall ecological impact is nevertheless still increasing, because every year increasing numbers of commodities are being produced, exchanged, and consumed as a result of growing economies (Jackson, 2009, Ch. 5). We might have more fuel-efficient cars, for example, but the rebound effect is that we are also driving more and buying more cars. This is but one example of the ‘Jevons paradox’ that permeates market societies and beyond (Polimeni et al., 2009) – a paradox, so-called, because a per unit reduction in the throughput of commodities does not always lead to reduced ecological impact, since those efficiency improvements are often outweighed by the increasing amounts of commodities that are consumed (Holm and Englund, 2009). The implication of this is that technology and efficiency improvements are not going to solve the ecological crisis, as their most optimistic advocates and popular consciousness seem to assume they can (Lovins, 1998) – at least, not unless the highly developed nations also transition away from growth economics. Efficiency without sufficiency is lost.