Global Warning
No, You Can’t
Bjørn Lomborg
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COPENHAGEN – Several thousand officials from 194 countries just gathered in Cancún, Mexico, for yet another global climate summit. Dissatisfied with the pace of climate diplomacy, many individuals are now wondering what they can do about climate change on their own.
For years now, climate activists from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio have argued that individual actions like driving more economical cars and using more efficient light bulbs are a crucial element in the effort to address global warming. The United Nations’ climate panel and the International Energy Agency both echo this sentiment, insisting that higher energy efficiency could reduce energy consumption by up to 30% – making improved efficiency an effective remedy for climate change. But is this really true?
Here’s something to think about. Back in the early 1970’s, the average American expended roughly 70 million British thermal units per year to heat, cool, and power his or her home. Since then, of course, we have made great strides in energy efficiency. As The Washington Post recently reported, dishwashers now use 45% less power than they did two decades ago, and refrigerators 51% less. So how much energy do Americans use in their homes today? On a per capita basis, the figure is roughly what it was 40 years ago: 70 million BTUs.
This surprising lack of change is the result of something economists call the “rebound effect.” It’s a phenomenon familiar to urban planners, who long ago discovered that building more roads doesn’t ease traffic jams – it merely encourages more people to get in their cars and drive.
The underlying principle is a decidedly counterintuitive fact of life. You might think that learning to use something more efficiently will result in your using less of it, but the opposite is true: the more efficient we get at using something, the more of it we are likely to use. Efficiency doesn’t reduce consumption; it increases it.
The Breakthrough Institute recently highlighted on its blog some startling – and important – research findings along these lines, published in August in The Journal of Physics by energy economist Harry Saunders and four colleagues from the US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. As Saunders noted in a summary on the blog, he and his colleagues, drawing on “300 years of evidence,” found that, “as lighting becomes more energy efficient, and thus cheaper, we use ever-more of it.”
For this reason, the proportion of resources that we expend on lighting has remained virtually unchanged for the past three centuries, at about 0.72% of gross domestic product. As Saunders and his colleagues observe in their journal article, “This was the case in the UK in 1700, is the case in the undeveloped world not on grid electricity in modern times, and is the case for the developed world in modern times using the most advanced lighting technologies.”
The conclusion that Saunders and his co-authors draw from this is both surprising and hard to dispute: rather than shrinking our electricity use, the introduction of ever more efficient lighting technologies is much more likely to lead to “massive…growth in the consumption of light.”
It’s difficult to overstate what these findings mean for climate policy. In a nutshell, they tell us that, while increasing energy efficiency is undoubtedly a good thing, it is most assuredly not a remedy for global warming. Or, as Saunders puts it, “energy efficiency may be a net positive in increasing economic productivity and growth, but should not be relied upon as a way to reduce energy consumption and thus greenhouse gas emissions.”
This is not an argument that should encourage anyone to go out and buy a Hummer. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that swapping our current car for a Prius, or replacing our incandescent lights with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs, will strike a meaningful blow against climate change. The real fix to this problem will come when governments focus on research and development aimed at boosting the proportion of green energy sources in overall consumption.
It may be reassuring to believe there are cheap and easy things we can do as individuals to stop global warming, or that the answer is to continue chasing a chimerical global agreement on carbon cuts, as in Cancún. But the real action that we can take is to press our politicians to put smarter ideas on the table.
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School. A new documentary about him and his work, also entitled Cool It, was released in the US on November 12.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link:
http://media.blubrry.com/ps/media.libsyn.com/media/ps/lomborg67.mp3
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pratclif1 05:34 12 Dec 10
the only way is to include a cost of environmental damage ie. climate change, in the price of energy, fossil energy oil gas and coal. The carbon tax.
vnehru 07:18 16 Dec 10
I found this article most interesting -- and then re-read the original blog in the Breakthrough Institute web pages and the article in the Journal of Physics. The finding that greater efficiency in energy use leads to little change in aggregate consumption of energy -- and the parallellism this has with the mainstream belief of most economists that labor productivity growth (leading to a decline in unit labor costs) leads to more employment -- is very appealing.
My only concern is the relevance this has to the contentious issue of climate change and/or environmental degradation. The debate on climate change and environmental sustainabilitiy has little to do with the amount of energy consumed, but with the fact that this energy is being produced through greenhouse gas emitting and environmentally-polluting technologies. Encouraging a shift toward renewables and pollution-reducing technologies, of course, can be achieved with carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems, appropriate tax and subsidy structures, and effective regulatory mechanisms -- provided governments have the political will to do so.
To summarize, increased efficiency of energy consumption helps (as all efficiency increases do) to promote growth and welfare. But mitigating the effects of climate change and reducing pollution requires measures that help change the mix of energy production technologies.
vnehru 07:18 16 Dec 10
I found this article most interesting -- and then re-read the original blog in the Breakthrough Institute web pages and the article in the Journal of Physics. The finding that greater efficiency in energy use leads to little change in aggregate consumption of energy -- and the parallellism this has with the mainstream belief of most economists that labor productivity growth (leading to a decline in unit labor costs) leads to more employment -- is very appealing.
My only concern is the relevance this has to the contentious issue of climate change and/or environmental degradation. The debate on climate change and environmental sustainabilitiy has little to do with the amount of energy consumed, but with the fact that this energy is being produced through greenhouse gas emitting and environmentally-polluting technologies. Encouraging a shift toward renewables and pollution-reducing technologies, of course, can be achieved with carbon taxes or cap-and-trade systems, appropriate tax and subsidy structures, and effective regulatory mechanisms -- provided governments have the political will to do so.
To summarize, increased efficiency of energy consumption helps (as all efficiency increases do) to promote growth and welfare. But mitigating the effects of climate change and reducing pollution requires measures that help change the mix of energy production technologies.
KaareFog 11:29 16 Dec 10
A criticism of Lomborg´s articlemay be seen here:
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/hallelujah-bjorn-again/
BruceS 11:01 17 Dec 10
Hmm, nice try but several flaws:
First and foremost, an ancient fallacy: if one person can't make a difference, then nobody should bother trying. In that case Mr. Lomborg, why should anyone vote?
Secondly, while your figures are correct, if you look a bit deeper into the figures the conclusions are questionable. e.g. It turns out that people have been using less energy per square foot over the last 50 years, but the average home size in the US has exploded, and that's what has made the difference. But home size is already starting to sink again, and with that effeciency will pay off. Are you correct in that efficiency will always partly be matched by increased use? Sure. But under most circumstances will it help? You betcha (to quote my favorite person).
Note on cars - pretty much the same thing. Mileage driven hasn't really changed much with price, but the size of cars bought exploded in the 90's.
Note on lighting - by any reasonable standards the world was a dark place until the mid-twentieth century, and even up until today in the 3rd world. A much more interesting study would be on lighting usage in the developed world in the last 50 years (and even more-so over the next 10).
And finally, in any case conservation alone certainly won't solve the crisis. You suggest that the answer is to put more money into research. But research alone isn't sufficient. Indeed, existing technologies are probably part of the solution. But almost any new technology is going to be more expensive until mass production kicks in. And the people you deride for buying Priuses are the people that have enabled a promising new technology to take root, producing cars that even you might buy someday.
mg 02:58 24 Jan 11
I'm rather confused by this piece. Just last week, I watched Lomborg be interviewed on the UK TV show The 10 O'Clock Show making the ridiculous claim that the only solution to Climate Change was technology alone. I remember clearly because the gross simplification of his argument enraged me somewhat.
Yet here in a piece just written a few weeks before, Lomborg sets out 'Jeavon's Paradox', and why it means that technology alone can never save us from Climate Change.
I'm confused - which is it that you believe Bjorn? Or do you just say whatever will garner you the most attention at that time?
wauch 06:57 12 Dec 10
Finally I agree with Mr. Lomborg.....Well Kinda! I agree that Al Gore and his kind are green/environmentalism profiteers aimed at getting in at the ground floor of the Green Industrial Complex AND I agree that Laura David and Mr. Gore's efforts are so feckless and insulting to those of us that knwo the science and have genuine concerns. However, I would add an epilogue to Mr. Lomborg's latest piece and that is that politicians are incapable in general of "smarter ideas" aside from maybe my junior Senator Bernie Sanders and the recently ousted Russ Feingold. The rest are media whores including Mr. Gore. What really needs to happen is less of a consumption buffett. We have given ourselves carte blanche to continue consuming as long as we have our Green Wits about us. Totally wrong message. Also it wouldn't hurt if some of my liberal and left-wing colleagues decided that 1 KID IS ENOUGH!!