…is Jevons’ Paradox.

From a recent post on The Oil Drum,

In his 1865 book “The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-Mines,” English economist William Stanley Jevons made the observation “Of the Economy of Fuel” that when improvements in technology make it possible to use a fuel more efficiently, the consumption of the fuel tends to go up, not down.

This is known as Jevons’ Paradox. It occurs because as the efficiency of a type of machinery is improved, it becomes profitable for many more customers and feasible to apply it to new applications. This results in rapid growth of the number of machines in use and consequently, an increase in fuel consumption overall.

Should I devote the next half-decade of my life to obtaining a PhD in this field simply to attempt to drive the cycle further? When society doesn’t provide incentives for low energy tech development, how can we make sustainable advances?