When good ideas meet bad practices

How is smart, sustainable energy and resource use like getting back to Kansas? The answer is that, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we’ve “always had the power” to achieve our goals.

Well, not always, perhaps. But certainly we’ve acquired more than enough information and technology in the past decade or two to make it clear we could be much farther along the green brick road of sustainability if only we taken that knowledge to heart. The problem, unfortunately, is that all our smart technologies are often outsmarted by, shall we say, not-so-smart practices.

What sorts of things could make a smart future harder to attain? Several come to mind:

• Jevon’s Paradox: Articulated by economist William Stanley Jevons in 1865, this is the discouraging tendency of people to consume more of something when it becomes easier to get. In Jevons’ day, the something was coal. In an era that gives us, on the one hand, smart energy meters and ever-more efficient electronics, but on the other hand, lots and lots more electronics per person (not to mention electric cars), that something could prove to be electricity.
• Anti-efficiency ideology: Sadly, in places like the US especially, the right wing of the political spectrum tends to view any government-led efforts to reduce energy consumption and improve efficiency as a sinister socialist conspiracy. New Mexico’s just-appointed head of the state’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, for example, has called climate science a plot to “increase government control.” And Republican US Representative Fred Upton, new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said he wants to repeal a law he once supported: a national act that mandates the phasing out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs.
• Technophilia at the expense of everything else: Yes, technology can work wonders at helping to power down idle computers, reduce vampire energy loss at outlets and provide excellent indoor lighting at a fraction of the previous energy cost. But the best payback will come only if we adopt new habits while also adopting new technologies. Habits like choosing public transport over personal cars, making better use of natural light and, yes, even recycling more.

In short, getting the most out of smarter technology will require us to act smarter too.