Jevon's Paradox
Jevon's paradox is a favorite argument of the Malthusian cheerleading crowd. A misappropriation of an outdated theory derived from the early 1800's at the beginning of the industrial revolution. It is misquoted and misunderstood much like the mythical "law of averages"
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/law-of-averages, the "Laffer Curve"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve and the 'free market'.
The Jevon's paradox, applied to efficiency gains under a growing technology development of a single fuel use like 1830 England and coal use, in the era of rapidly declining whale oil stocks, works to a degree. However, in the more complex realities of climate change and the need to implement a non-free market restriction of fossil fuel use as our only solution. The Jevon's paradox does not apply.
I hope that everyone here recognizes that we will not have an effective fuel switching policy away from fossil fuels without non-free market actions (i.e. carbon tax, international trade tariffs based on emissions, heavy subsidies of CO2 free-sources for energy consumption.)
We do need efficiency, efficiency, efficiency Absolutely! There is no way that efficiency alone can cause our energy supply to switch away from coal, oil and natural gas. This must happen in an environment of non-free market policy changes.
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Nuclear power.
how many nuclear accidents does anyone here expect to occur from France?
It can be done as it has been done if it is done correctly. All of the ways that people assert as being their reasons against it are due to outmoded and irresponsible behavior. I have significant nuclear power experience. I used to be against nuclear power until only recently. I was against, not because of the inherent risks, the risks can be managed and their effects can be mitigated. But because I recognized that there was corner cutting by people who would rather make more money than ensure safety, on a global scale. I felt that we were not "mature" enough to implement nuclear safely on free-market principles.
I then realized that there is no other way. (besides the collapse of modern economy into a post apocalyptic new feudal system where for most of the population the average life expectancy is 30 years, abject hunger and poverty and for a few gilded few, there is a private personal resource of energy, health, militia and food.) This is where our current trajectory is headed and it is absolutely insane for anyone to openly advocate for this as a solution. We simply need to use nuclear, lots of it, to source the energy necessary to convert our economy and society to sustainable systems. Relying on fossil fuels to provide that necessary energy will doom our children.
Advocating away from nuclear, and for free-market solutions is the same as arguing for global economic collapse and neo-feudalism. It is absolutely fatalistic and completely unnecessary since using a combination of command economy directives, coupled with a massive push of government spending, going into the economy, will allow for a global reduction in fossil fuel emissions by 85% in the next 20 years (and prepare for the technological necessity of biomass carbon capture and sequestration (to effectively pull existing CO2 out of the atmosphere).
Any other "solution", one other than massive mitigation and command economy implementations is a non-solution, or wishful thinking. We simply cannot reduce our emissions quickly enough using free-market principles. This is especially true when one considers the collapse of the amazon and the emissions of methane from boreal peat.
of course, there is always Paraguay. . .
https://maps.google.com/?ll=-24.735138,-55.906506&spn=0.110853,0.209255&t=h&z=13
