Efficiency Improvements Increase Consumption
I think the book is actually deeply flawed and misleading,…. but not because MacKay’s numbers are not better than most, or that numbers don’t matter, but because the unasked numbers that matter a lot more. It’s still the old model of sustainability, just hope we multiply impacts more slowly.
It’s ALWAYS been the numbers we were not counting that have been the real problem. The sustainability community quite generally happy going along with the profitability rule for everything, but it’s so they can be players in the business game, and not because it will work. It seems more than unlikely that we can reduce impacts by just slowing their multiplication, but just not asking the question so have no answer for it.
I think why it’s tricky is that it forces us to switch from things that are easy to count (the change in our pocket, say) and things that are hard to count (the energy around the world that went into producing the change in our pocket). It means thinking about whole systems and that’s a special failing of humans, and a big part of why the earth is failing as a place for us to comfortably live. Take the idea that improving efficiencies will reduce consumption, that nearly all our plans for sustainability are based on. That’s true for the change in your pocket, but it’s not true for the world. It seems that anyone who asks the question (though few do) finds that the whole system result of improved efficiencies actually never did have that effect ever before and probably never will.
World energy use has been continually doubling almost twice as fast as energy efficiency has been, http://www.synapse9.com/issues/EffLearn_grow2.pdf because efficiency is a primary growth stimulus to business. They use it all the time. You can’t understand how it works from things that are easy to count, though. You have to leave the world of simple formulas and look at how organized systems behave as a whole. They work like teams. Efficiency to an individual seems like giving something up, but to the whole economy or a business the savings lets you multiply your product.
We are a long way down the road to still be making grand conceptual errors with this. What would have the desired effect would be a non-growing system to have improved efficiency as a whole, to actually reduce total resource consumption and impacts. That’s a question about numbers we are just not yet asking.
Phil Henshaw
NY NY www.synapse9.com
This is about the best book on the subject I have seen so far, very
readable for the common man, but packed with data including financial
Sustainable Energy - without the hot air by Dr David MacKay of
the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge
http://www.withouthotair.com/download.html
Free download in .pdf format
regards
Ferrand www.grunweb.org.uk
I need a feasible and sustainable green program.
hi, im paul and im a student leader from the philippines, i wanted to
ask you guys of any program concept/ideas that would be best as an
activity of our university. we really wanted to help and make this
world better.
hope to hear from you soon.
my e-mail account is vos_amo143@yahoo.com
._,_._
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.