Jevon’s paradox and the myth of resource efficiency as a solution for sustainability

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來自 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 的課程

Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: the Nexus between Water, Energy and Food

11 個評分

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems: the Nexus between Water, Energy and Food

11 個評分

In this course you will become familiar with the ideas of the water-energy-food nexus and transdisciplinary thinking. You will learn to see your community or country as a complex social-ecological system and to describe its water, energy and food metabolism in the form of a pattern, as well as to map the categories of social actors. We will provide you with the tools to measure the nexus elements and to analyze them in a coherent way across scales and dimensions of analysis. In this way, your quantitative analysis will become useful for informed decision-making. You will be able to detect and quantify dependence on non-renewable resources and externalization of environmental problems to other societies and ecosystems (a popular ‘solution’ in the western world). Practical case studies, from both developed and developing countries, will help you evaluate the state-of-play of a given community or country and to evaluate possible solutions. Last but not least, you will learn to see pressing social-ecological issues, such as energy poverty, water scarcity and inequity, from a radically different perspective, and to question everything you’ve been told so far. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Part of the results and case studies presented have been developed within two projects: MAGIC and PARTICIPIA. However, the course does not reflect the views of the funding institutions or of the project partners as a whole, and the case studies were presented purely with an educational and illustrative purpose.

從本節課中

MODULE 1. Introducing the basic concepts

In this first week we will look at the nexus from a different perspective: What is the nexus? Why is it getting all this attention right now? Is it just a buzzword, or something more? We will start by explaining what the nexus means in terms of complexity and propose the basic concepts needed for a metabolic analysis of the nexus. It might take a while to get your head around these concepts, but they are essential to understand what comes next. Finally, we will give examples of “elephants in the room” in the sustainability discourse – to show you that mainstream narratives are not always right.

The “intolerable” dependence on fossil fuel imports10:42

Circular economy, Bioeconomy and Zero-emissions14:32

Jevon’s paradox and the myth of resource efficiency as a solution for sustainability9:11

與講師見面

Mario Giampietro
ICREA Research Professor
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Andrea Saltelli
Guest researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)
Tarik Serrano
Post-Doc Researcher
Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA)

[MUSIC]

Welcome back to the class on the systemic blunder on the training of

sustainability issue.

In this section, we will discuss the Jevons' Paradox and

the myth of resource efficiency as a solution for sustainability.

What is the main point of this lecture is that when dealing with an adaptive system,

it is impossible to estimate the future effects of changes,

because the system after you impose a change of them, began something else.

So extrapolating the existing perception of causality, define what,

into the future, is not an effective way of making prediction.

First of all, before starting the discussion of the Jevon's Paradox,

one short reminder about the efficiency idea, that we are assuming efficiently

as it's a sacred tool that will solve all the problems of sustainability.

But the very father of thermodynamics, Sadi Carnot, ended his book,

that history of thermodynamic,

reflection on the motive power of fire with this paragraph,

we should never expect to utilize all the motive power of combustible.

Combustible in the sense, you don't want to add the maximum efficiency, and

the fact that the efficiency is just one of many other factors to be considered

when assessing the performance of an engine or whatever.

In this case, it say safe it's strength or ability is most based in and so on.

But getting to the main point of the discussion is that why

the idea that by putting more efficient things that we

solve the problem sustainability is not a good story?

Because we are not in general capable of predicting the future as humans.

So let's have a test, and

I ask you a question in considering two scenarios and

guess who would be happier two years from now in these two scenarios.

The two scenarios are, one, winning a big prize with a lottery of few

millions of dollars or euros, or having an accident and becoming paraplegic.

So let's imagine that you can choose, you'll be in the TV show,

which of the two button you will be pushing.

Because there is a person that make this analysis,

interview people after three years.

They had this either winning the lottery, and an accident and becoming paraplegic.

And ask them, how they were feeling, they were happier or not.

So you did up your mind, you push your button, and now we can see the result.

And the winner is nobody and this is exactly irrelevant in this sense,

that after two years, people readjust to their lives.

So the optimist imagine that they are happier now than before.

The pessimist, they said that they are not happier than.

But I mean, in this sense, even if you have a big change,

this is the readjust, it doesn't perceive a given change

after a period of time as determining his daily overreach.

So the Jevon's paradox, what is the Jevon's paradox?

At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,

they were mining a lot of coal and water was building up in the mine,

so they had to pump out the water and, of course, this would be the first used of

the thermal engine developed by new combined joule, and by the owner.

And then, the people in the UK, they were concerned by

the fact that they were using very bad engines,

with very low efficiency, 4%, 5%, so

they were consuming an enormous amount of coal to operate the engine.

So we have to increase the efficiency of the steam engines in order to save coal,

otherwise we will but consumed too much coal.

And Jevon said, [SOUND] this is exactly the opposite, the more we will

have efficient steam engines, and the more we will consume coal.

Of course, he was right, we started with a very crappy.

A pump for water, they get a better one.

As soon as they had a better engine, they start using for other purposes.

One of the first was to tractors in the countryside, trains, boats, whatever.

So this is a generalizable principle,

is an example that I got from Joe vending machine.

The first vending machine could be operated only in crowded places,

only in companies with a lot of people,

then they do a new generation of vending machine with sensors for human presence so

they are shut down and when they feel presence they get up with light.

So these are much more efficient because of these they can be placed everywhere.

So even if an individual machine is consuming less energy there

are many more machines around.

So the electricity consumed in vending machine is increased,

there are many examples.

You have cars, more efficient cars became bigger cars with more efficient

4-wheel drive, TC screen, personalized air conditioning.

Then, there was a famous study in Sweden

about what the vegetarians do with the spare money and

they travel more, so they are eating vegetarian dish, but in Thailand.

So there is a systemic problem

about the system they adjust to the change and they start doing something else.

So let's do an R test, and then check whether at this point,

you can better guess the effect of technical innovations.

Let's imagine that we have 2 cars, 1 car a Hummer, that is consuming

6 kilometer per liter or the SMART that is consuming 14 kilometers per liter.

So it's consuming less than half of the other.

In the long terms, in evolutionary terms,

which of the two will consume more gasoline, the Hummer or the SMART?

Make your choice.

It's okay, now, the Hummer is already out of production.

The SMART has been producing 1.6 million and counting.

So this is another example in which the more efficient things has

been amplified and in terms of the total consumption of energy,

gasoline, whatever, emission of CO2,

it is more dangerous efficiently than the inefficient things.

So there is a last observation to be done.

In general, when talking on this problem economies and

older conventional scientist correlates rebound effect.

In the sense that it is more or less of the same.

So the car, that was before is the same as they are now is just driving more might.

And this is a forced choice if you want to use the questions.

You have to use the question, you have to use the same things,

you change some parameter.

In reality, the Jevon's paradox is deeper than that.

He said that when you become more efficient, you become something else.

And therefore,

the models that you were using at the beginning are no longer useful.

An apple becomes an orange.

Just to conclude this session, let's again, go to the wisdom of

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen who was talking about economic prediction,

be able to make prediction by making models.

And this, every time they fail in prediction,

they get a self defeating excuse.

History has changed the parameter.

The system becomes something else.

But then the point is if history is so coming,

why persist in predicting it using a econometric analysis?

This is the point is that the Jevon's paradox is

a brand it rings a bell about a fact.

That they use a quantitative analysis to describe a system is very limited.

Thank you.

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