This is great Lloyd, thank you. What a fun and thought-provoking post. The Radio Shack ad is an amazing example of ephemeralisation but isn't it also an example of Jevons paradox? As in, I never would have owned most of those things back in the day but as they get cheaper and cheaper they get added on and added on. Surely not enough to outweigh the carbon benefits of making them digital of course. But then surely the answer is a kind of combination of Sufficiency and Ephemeralisation? And speaking of sufficiency, here is a video a colleague shared with me today: The CEO of Veolia, a mammoth Energy, Waste and Water company, extolling the virtues of sufficiency: https://youtu.be/K_ibNuZAbbM - at least in France it seems to be more and more mainstream but I cannot help but doubt the sincerity of many of pick up the mantle.
Having one burner is a sure sign of someone who doesn't cook much. I camp (a lot, making real meals) on two burners for a family of four (and frequently for others too), and I shudder at the thought of doing that year-round. I'll keep my four-burner induction range, thanks. Low-carbon paths to simplicity can be found in many, many other areas of life, including smaller footprints on high-performance homes, taking a pass on almost all electronics and gadgets — and cooking real meals at home from locally sourced ingredients. Thanks for your always thought-provoking posts!
When discussing copper most people leave out that for a lot of applications Aluminium is an adequate substitute (with a possible small loss of efficiency) and we have plenty of that. In many cases using copper coated aluminium wire doesn't even lead to an efficiency loss. Overhead power lines are generally aluminium coated steel cables not copper.
This is great Lloyd, thank you. What a fun and thought-provoking post. The Radio Shack ad is an amazing example of ephemeralisation but isn't it also an example of Jevons paradox? As in, I never would have owned most of those things back in the day but as they get cheaper and cheaper they get added on and added on. Surely not enough to outweigh the carbon benefits of making them digital of course. But then surely the answer is a kind of combination of Sufficiency and Ephemeralisation? And speaking of sufficiency, here is a video a colleague shared with me today: The CEO of Veolia, a mammoth Energy, Waste and Water company, extolling the virtues of sufficiency: https://youtu.be/K_ibNuZAbbM - at least in France it seems to be more and more mainstream but I cannot help but doubt the sincerity of many of pick up the mantle.
Having one burner is a sure sign of someone who doesn't cook much. I camp (a lot, making real meals) on two burners for a family of four (and frequently for others too), and I shudder at the thought of doing that year-round. I'll keep my four-burner induction range, thanks. Low-carbon paths to simplicity can be found in many, many other areas of life, including smaller footprints on high-performance homes, taking a pass on almost all electronics and gadgets — and cooking real meals at home from locally sourced ingredients. Thanks for your always thought-provoking posts!
When discussing copper most people leave out that for a lot of applications Aluminium is an adequate substitute (with a possible small loss of efficiency) and we have plenty of that. In many cases using copper coated aluminium wire doesn't even lead to an efficiency loss. Overhead power lines are generally aluminium coated steel cables not copper.