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Energy use per capita has already been falling for two decades in the US: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/10/176801719/two-centuries-of-energy-in-ame
by bobthepanda 3y ago
Energy use per capita has already been falling for two decades in the US: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/10/176801719/two-centuries-of-energy-in-america-in-four-graphs https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/04/10/176801719/two-...
- snapplebobapple 3y agoThats not really what that chart looks like to me, or at least the effect is very moderate. The big drops correspond to economic shocks. Even if i ignore that the chart is topping at roughly 350 in 1975 and bottoming around 310 in what i assume is 2023, which makes it what? A 0.22% annual decrease?
- kjkjadksj 3y agoYou are making the assumption there won’t be some new technology that gobbles up significant energy. At one point an American’s electrical consumption might have been home lighting and a radio. Then it jumped by an order of magnitude with the refrigerator and air conditioner.
- pfdietz 3y agoMost of the examples I can think of with that would not be localized. For example, if we need massively more computing for an AI breakthrough, there's nothing requiring that to be localized. Similarly for production of any commodity that can be shipped.
- bobthepanda 3y agoEnergy costs are so high in the modern age relative to how dirt cheap it was pre-OPEC crisis, that any sort of significant energy consumption would be a barrier to significant adoption. Your average Joe cannot afford to mine Bitcoin, for example. If anything we have mostly seen massive improvements in energy efficiency in the last two decades, with appliances, the switch to LED lighting from incandescent, heat pumps vs other heating/air technology, etc. What new technologies have shown up get quickly innovated in the name of energy efficiency.