Jevon's Paradox Explained

sparky · Tar Sands Joined: Apr 09, 2007 Posts: 98

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A Cuba future isn't the worst Very Happy

It would be quite possible to get the Kmers rouge style of society Sad

There seems to be a relationship between the price of available energy and the price of labor ,
possibly through the food production cost .
At face value society would rewind the historical movie ,

Two world wars , the end of the last one being fought with horse cavalry ,
then the plunge out of industrial societies

there is however some long lasting progress who would skew this scenario toward new forms , big hydro dams and the odd nuclear plant and of course one hundred year of rubbish heap and cities to be mined .

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jimk · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 7:13 am Post subject: Re: Jevon's Paradox Explained

Here is a super simple example of how Jevon's paradox can work. I.e., we can end up using more petroleum when we get more efficient in our use of it.

Suppose we have two possible processes by which to make some widget.

In process A, we use $16 of oil and $2 of abrasive to make a widget. In process B, we use $4 of oil and $10 of abrasive to make a widget. So process A costs $18 per widget, and process B is $14. So we use process B.

Now, suppose we figure out how to improve our efficiency and can cut out oil usage in half.

Now, process A will use $8 of oil and $2 of abrasive per widget, i.e. a total of $10. Process B will use $2 of oil and $10 of abrasive, i.e. a total of $12.

When we improved our efficiency, process A became the less costly process, so we will switch to that. Now we are using $8 of oil per widget, instead of $4. We improved our efficiency by a factor of two, but our consumption went up by a factor of two!