> And what about the rising cost of electricity? See, this is why I prefer to argue from data in policy discussions. The cost of electricity has been flat or

> And what about the rising cost of electricity? See, this is why I prefer to argue from data in policy discussions. The cost of electricity has been flat or declining since 1990. I used the data from http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm, specifically http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/avgprice_annual.xls http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/state/avgprice_annual.xl.... I found that the EIA publishes prices in nominal amounts, i.e., not adjusted for inflation. So, I used the inflation calculator at http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm, and then I plotted electricity prices from 1990 to 2012. That chart is at https://infogr.am/electricity-prices-are-flat https://infogr.am/electricity-prices-are-flat. The yellow line is the raw data from the EIA: the average retail price, in cents per kilowatt-hour, of electricity for all regions and markets. The red line is the inflation-adjusted retail price in cents of the same. (Interesting aside: at a glance, it looks like it's almost entirely the unregulated service providers which are skewing the price of electricity upward.) > Jevon's Paradox is a straight forward corollary of supply and demand. A corollary is not data! This is exactly why arguing from ideology is bad: you found something that sounds good, and you believed it, and you never checked to see if it was true. I insist that you find some data to support your argument, because so far, every single bit of data I can find suggests that Jevon's Paradox is complete bunk. (aside: "annoyed" is my username there not because of this discussion, but because of the annoying way that infogr.am handles account setup.) edit: after thinking about it a bit, I think residential electricity usage for lighting should be a great test case for Jevon's Paradox. Although residential lighting is only responsible for something like 1% of domestic electricity usage, there has still been a remarkable change in the efficiency of residential lighting since 1970. If Jevon's Paradox is true, we should see a flat or increased demand for residential electricity for lighting over the same period; if it is not true, as I suspect, we should see an overall decreased demand for electricity for residential lighting. That is: if you're right, then more efficient bulbs should mean that people are leaving the lights on more often or are adding more lighting to their homes, roughly in proportion to the increase in efficiency. I chose residential lighting because the annual costs are relatively low, compared to heating and cooling (so trends should be resistant to changes in the economy), because bulb efficiency has changed quite a lot over the last several decades, and because more efficient bulbs have been accessible to people in most economic tiers. Unfortunately, although I can find current data on residential electricity usage for lighting, I haven't been able to find any historic figures.