undefined | Better HN

0 pointsSchroedingersat3y ago0 comments

> as per the Jevons paradox

You don't start eating 50kg a day if you become vegetarian, and you don't spend 30 hours a day travelling if you do it by train. Yes, universally switching from cars to any other form of transport would save people 1-3 hours a day to do other things, but if they spend that time doing anything other than sitting in a car it's a win.

You also don't get to use "what if noone did that" as a counter argument for something helping if everybody did it.

If everyone insulated their home properly, got rid of their cars, stopped eating beef, and cut the remaining animal proteins by half we'd be pretty close to net zero right now.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

dane-pgp3y ago· 2 in thread

My point about the Jevons paradox is that if, for example, 10% of people stopped eating meat (for climate reasons), that could mean that the price of meat goes down, which would make meat more affordable for other potential consumers, so a different 10% of people might end up starting to eat meat.

That's an extreme example, but it's not impossible to imagine that there are low-income occasional meat-eaters out there who might start consuming more meat if the price went down. Maybe the increase wouldn't completely reverse the initial reduction, but if the net result was equivalent to only 5% of people changing their lifestyle, then we're talking about a very small change in CO2 emissions.

SchroedingersatOP3y ago

So 'your thing doesn't work if I imagine that people instead do the opposite' as a rebuttal then?

dane-pgp3y ago

I'm imagining that people will do the opposite because it is known that people usually buy more of a desirable commodity when its price goes down.

Of course there are limits to how much latent demand there is, and how price-sensitive consumers are, but it is not unreasonable for me to have raised this as a possibility.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse