Energy Efficiency Paradox and Resource Bottlenecks

There's a phenomenon associated with energy efficiency that was noted in Britain back in the 19th century. (Jevon's Paradox) When machines got more energy efficient (Watt's steam engine), coal consumption actually increased. In the United States and Western Europe, most people live a 10 kilowatt lifestyle. The per capita energy use has remained roughly the same for many, many decades in spite of huge improvements in efficiency (fuel injected engines for example). LED lighting is a good example of the mechanism that seems to drive this paradox. The lights last indefinitely and use little power, so they can be left on all the time, and can be used in many more places. This concept goes hand in hand with the idea that technology doesn't really advance it just grows.

This paradox is good evidence of an Egregore. That is, our civilization is really a meta-animal borne out of the apparent autonomous action of individuals. It is bound, as a creature, by 10 kilowatts per individual. There's some underlying physical thing that limits energy use per unit time in our civilization.

In prior iterations of the beast, the Classical World, for example, the limit was much, much lower. It was probably just over the average power output per adult human--around 200 Watts.

When you mow your lawn with a 10 horsepower lawn tractor, you're employing 7.5 kWatts of power. When you mow it with a scythe, it's about 200 Watts. In the classical or medieval era, the limit was imposed by the ability of plants to turn sunlight into sugars and starches. Plants generally convert less than 1% of the sunlight into calories. It was also limited by the ability of humans and animals to convert that energy into work.

The limit in our time is probably the inefficiency of conversion of one form of energy to another, which generally creates a lot of waste heat. That waste heat conspires to limit our lifestyle to 10 kilowatts per person. (this is probably the reason we won't ever have a Star Trek civilization)

That limit is probably the real resource bottleneck in our civilization. When that resource shifts drastically into a single industry or area, like Tech, it comes out of other places, like real world infrastructure repair and improvement.

Thinking about the civilization as an Egregore or meta-animal is a better way to wrestle with a problem like "sustainability". The notion that laws of man form or constrain the Beast is a fucking joke. It's really an Egregore/wizard war. If you wanted to bring in Elf Tech world, you're really killing off the previous beast in its own plane of existence.

from here