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> Efficiency alone almost certainly will not allow us to avoid climate catastrophe, due to the Jevons Paradox: Meh, it depends. Having a light bulb that uses

> Efficiency alone almost certainly will not allow us to avoid climate catastrophe, due to the Jevons Paradox: Meh, it depends. Having a light bulb that uses 15W instead of 100W to illuminate a room is certainly a win. There's only so many lights that you'd put in a given area to achieve the same result, even if you add more for aesthetic reasons: there's only so many lumens that are useful in an area. Furnaces and water heaters are now >90% efficient, and given that they (direct) vent from the outside, and exhaust to the outside increases safety and air leakage. Do you add more heaters and furnaces to a house because each is more efficient. Cars are more efficient, and yet total annual distance driven (in the US) seems to have plateaued and fallen over the last decade or so: * https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/distance-driven-per-person-is-still-down-from-its-maximum-in-2004.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/distance-driven-per...

skyfaller 4y ago
> There's only so many lights that you'd put in a given area to achieve the same result, even if you add more for aesthetic reasons: there's only so many lumens that are useful in an area. You'd think that, but we now see people experimenting with light bulbs that are bright as the sun, purportedly to improve their mood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718 "I bought an extremely bright “corn cob” style bulb. It emits as much light as about 40 incandescents, and produces enough waste heat that it needs an internal cooling fan to dissipate it." It's not difficult to imagine a future where this is the norm, and people having anything dimmer than full sunlight indoors is considered medieval and backwards. We can always find new limits to what is "useful". UPDATE: In that article, the author also says this of the lightbulb: "It draws about 2 kWh per day (assuming 8h of usage), which costs about $0.30 at typical rates. This is comparable to one day of a modern fridge or one load of laundry. Power is cheap, folks!" This is a perfect example of why we need to talk about climate justice, because the average American refrigerator consumes more energy than an average person in many countries: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23106061/energy-inequity-world-electricity-american-refrigerators https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23106061/energy-inequity-... The rest of the world cannot live the way we currently do in the USA, if we are to avoid catastrophic global heating.

skyfaller 4y ago

> There's only so many lights that you'd put in a given area to achieve the same result, even if you add more for aesthetic reasons: there's only so many lumens that are useful in an area. You'd think that, but we now see people experimenting with light bulbs that are bright as the sun, purportedly to improve their mood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718 "I bought an extremely bright “corn cob” style bulb. It emits as much light as about 40 incandescents, and produces enough waste heat that it needs an internal cooling fan to dissipate it." It's not difficult to imagine a future where this is the norm, and people having anything dimmer than full sunlight indoors is considered medieval and backwards. We can always find new limits to what is "useful". UPDATE: In that article, the author also says this of the lightbulb: "It draws about 2 kWh per day (assuming 8h of usage), which costs about $0.30 at typical rates. This is comparable to one day of a modern fridge or one load of laundry. Power is cheap, folks!" This is a perfect example of why we need to talk about climate justice, because the average American refrigerator consumes more energy than an average person in many countries: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23106061/energy-inequity-world-electricity-american-refrigerators https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23106061/energy-inequity-... The rest of the world cannot live the way we currently do in the USA, if we are to avoid catastrophic global heating.