Projecting backwards from my reading on peak oil mitigation WI it was an article of faith from the start of the Industrial Revolution to squeeze every last drop from resource inputs? So industry generated electricty from it's waste heat and reused/recycled/sold its waste products, electrcity generation plants used waste heat to heat nearby buildings, these sort of synergistic things. Now before people think that greater energy/resource efficiency leads to less energy/resource use Jevon paradox states the opposite; greater efficiency leads to greater consumption.
So how do we develop in a world where there is far more electricty generation available from the get-go and more quantity/diverse outputs from industry? Would we have suffered a resource driven collapse, or transcended resurce limitations, or something else again?
So how do we develop in a world where there is far more electricty generation available from the get-go and more quantity/diverse outputs from industry? Would we have suffered a resource driven collapse, or transcended resurce limitations, or something else again?