Environmentalists have made a religion out of energy efficiency, but maybe that is a mistake, according to a growing number of people looking at these investments.
In economics, Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource. Classic example: As cars have become more efficient, people drive them further and further.
It is a fallacy that the world's people can all enjoy our current American lifestyle if we just make our machines and lives efficient enough. You can only get so many pints of blood from a stone.
Maytag would like to sell you a "drying closet" for drying some of your more delicate clothes. If you screwed in enough CFLs and bought a hybrid, you might have saved enough to buy one. Project Laundry List suggests a clothesline.
What would happen if every household in the developing world expected to have a dryer and drying cabinet by 2020, never mind a fridge and a gas range?
Here in New Hampshire, where we spend all of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative monies on energy efficiency and our socially responsible businesses are becoming Goliaths because they figured out that EE=$$, energy efficiency won't even be a topic at the annual legislative breakfast of Conservation New Hampshire--the state-wide league of conservation voters affiliate.
In her classic, More Work for Mother, Ruth Cowan Shwartz writes about how the new efficiencies attached to household tasks have abolished the need for traditional husband work, replacing it with wage-earning so the family can buy stuff, like the enriched flour that is making many of us sick and fat. For women, the expectations and the amount of time spent doing housework have increased or stayed the same. I have only seen one or two people hopeful that this situation will turn around.
We need to rethink what we are doing before it is too late and we should not be afraid to sacrifice some holy cows (like energy efficiency) before their methane does us in...