Elevate Economics

Tunnel vision on net zero emissions ignores, or even increases the rate of material throughput and thus natural resource extraction. For a couple of reasons. Capitalism’s internal logic is to accumulate involving expropriation; to create surplus and thus to seek out new ways to extract.

Jevon’s Paradox is the idea that more energy efficient production (reducing the amount of resources necessary for any one use) by reducing cost, induces increases in demand to the degree that resource use is increased rather than reduced overall (see research papers on Jevon’s Paradox and the ‘rebound effect’).

Additionally, a narrow focus on carbon emissions ignores, even contributes to the rising rates of resource extraction by enabling the status quo of excessive consumption. Emissions is just one of the many planetary boundaries.

Switching to electric cars for one involves substantial rates of rise in extraction. Replacing the worlds 2 billion oil fuel cars would require a 70% increase in mining of rare earth metals neodymium and dysprosium whilst cobalt output would need to increase at least three and a half times from now until 2050 (not to mention the huge negative externalities of cobalt mining through worker exploitation in Congo). A tonne of lithium, burns through 50,000 gallons of water, destabilising water tables in Andes etc. The list goes on.

(Data source: Natural History Museum Head of Earth Sciences Prof Richard Herrington and fellow expert members of SoS MinErals)

#planetaryboundaries #resourceextraction #deepseamining# extraction#consumption #worsethanstatusquo #jevonsparadox #reboundeffect #degrowth