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As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduc
by mjburgess 7y ago
As far as I can tell this is just a misunderstanding of "growth" in an economic sense. Growth is the result of improvements in productivity, which tend to reduce energy use (per item produced). We consume more energy net because we produce more.
If, eg., products became more expensive because of limited energy (or relevant taxing of externalities) then we would grow more slowly -- we can still produce more through innovation and consume less energy.
It took a huge amount of energy in the past to make a single pair of socks -- today, it takes a tiny amount.
I think the relevant question for 'exponential energy-consumption graphs' is what the relationship is to growth (it simply cannot be assumed that there is a 'deep causal' relationship; this is fallacious equivocation).
Eg., population has been increasing exponentially. Could a static population size produce a flat (or falling) net energy use graph -- whilst still obtaining economic growth (ie., productivity improvements)?
- adolph 7y agoYou might enjoy or be thinking about this episode of the Econtalk podcast “ Andrew McAfee on More from Less”: http://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/ http://www.econtalk.org/andrew-mcafee-on-more-from-less/
- paulintrognon 7y agoEmpirically, economic growth has always been related to consumption of energy and raw materials. One explanation is the Rebound effect[1] Maybe theorically they can be decoupled, but we have yet to see that in the real world. More about it: https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
- pas 7y agoThere is a lot of raw materials and energy. The problem is how clean we can do extraction and energy generation. So it's not surprising that we are still very much tracking both correlates.
- HPsquared 7y agoIncreasingly in the Information Age, my intuition is that people are paying more and more as a fraction of their income for non-physical goods/services, which don't have much of an energy footprint.
- codeulike 7y agoAKA 'Peak Stuff'
- duxut_staglatz 7y agoGrowth can come both from using more inputs (capital, energy, labor) or using the same input more efficiently (i.e. technological progress). There is no reason to claim that only technological progress induced growth counts as growth but when the GDP increases because we use more inputs it is not somehow growth.