Originally Posted by acroy
An interesting line from Popular Science:
"Largely as a result of technological advances, the U.S. now uses 47 percent less energy per dollar of economic output than it did 30 years ago."
PopSci's entertaining little article is here:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/energy/
Interestingly, they have a bit on Tony Ellsworth in there.
Jevon's Paradox. We've gotten much more efficient at using energy, but this increased efficiency doesn't result in less energy use because we keep expanding our use of energy. Taking the Popular Science example, we are using less energy per dollar than we were 30 years. But how much total energy are we using compared to 30 years ago? A lot, lot more. Increased efficiency is meaningless unless you make a conscious effort to reduce your total energy use, which we have consistently failed to do. It's another one of the complexities of the problem. If become more efficient with our oil use but don't change our monetary system so it stops demanding exponential growth, the efficiency is wiped out...