Jim, thinking dollars instead of joules helps resolve the paradox. <As Whorisky notes in the article, the sales of SUVs appears to support the thesis that energy efficiency might boomerang to actually increase consumption. The trend has been that gains in fuel efficiency have been used to build bigger cars with more power, instead of cars that use less overall gas consumption." >
The idea that increased fuel efficiency would lead to more fuel consumption should not be surprising. If the desire to travel is limited by dollars then of course if people can do a lot more travel for a bit more money, they will. It's called price elasticity. If they can get a bigger car for the same money they will do so if they were compromising on size.
When airliners were horrendously expensive to travel in, few people traveled. Fuel was expensive and inefficiently used. Now, fuel is cheap and huge A380s use just a little per passenger kilometre so hordes of people can travel and do and do so more frequently.
When people have done all the traveling they want to do or are freed from the economic need to travel then even if the fuel is free, they won't bother using more of it.
In my younger days, the cost of fuel was a serious consideration in my decisions to travel and mode of travel. Now, the cost of fuel is irrelevant but I travel a lot less. Even if they give it away free, I won't buy more of it. Neither would I buy a bigger vehicle because parking, narrow driveways and other problems would be annoying.
There is no need for Kremlinized central planning to decide what people should do. Fire all the government people who ponder such things and pay off some debts. If people want to spend loads of money on fuel for dirty great SUVs, that's their decision. All the government needs to do is protect the commons, aka the air, so that it's not polluted by lead, soot, NOX, CO and SOX. CO2 is not pollution, it's plant food and equivalent to irrigation [plants need less water with more CO2].
Money is the unit of value, not energy, or CO2.
Mqurice |
