With its 1.2million LED lights shining brightly against the Las Vegas night, the Las Vegas Sphere may well be the ultimate symbol of 2020s overuse. But that gigantic entertainment space is also something else: a symbol of the coming conflict between our climate goals and our seemingly insatiable(永不满足) appetite for stuff.
In the 1990s, multicolor LED lights were invented to prevent climate disasters by greatly reducing the amount of electricity we use. After all, LED lights use 90percent less energy and last around 18 times longer than incandescent bulbs(白炽灯).Yet the amount of electricity we consume for light globally is roughly the same today as it was in 2010. That's partly because of population and economic growth in the developing world. But another big reason is that as technology has advanced, we've only grown more wasteful.
There's an economic term for this: the Jevons Paradox, named for the 19th-century English economist William Stanley Jevons, who noticed that as steam engines became ever more efficient, Britain's appetite for coal increased rather than decreased. The logic of Jevons is that instead of banking the efficiency savings we make as technology advances, we go out and spend it.
Today, you can see examples of the Paradox everywhere. When residents in England installed home insulation, their overall heating energy demand soon rebounded, ending up at about the same level as it was before: The residents had apparently chosen to turn up their thermostats(温控器) and live in warmer homes.
The good news is that in some cases the efficiency gains are so great that even our insatiable appetite for new stuff cannot completely negate them. Today's car engines require less fuel, even though Americans on average now drive longer distances in heavier cars. However, the bad news is that the Jevons Paradox seems to be hard-wired into us. There are few examples throughout history of people willingly consuming less energy, either for moral or environmental reasons.
For some, the solution is obvious: Governments must do more to limit our energy use, perhaps through regulations or taxes. A global carbon tax would help—though the chances of establishing one remain slim. A more innovative answer comes from Rob West, founder and chief executive of Thunder Said Energy. Having spent years documenting the Jevons Paradox and finding it far more widespread than economists predicted, he thinks the best hope we have is to fight Jevons with Jevons. That means applying the idea that consumption increases as goods become cheaper and more efficient to our production of energy. In other words, the future lies not in rationing(定量供应) energy and hoping humans suddenly change their behavior, but in ensuring any energy we use is as green and attractive as possible.
