The climate conundrum

DO current approaches to climate change make sense? “No”, claims New Yorker writer David Owen in The Conundrum: How trying to save the planet is making our climate problems worse.

“Our capacity for self-deception is breathtaking.”

“Energy use begets energy use,” writes Owen, a disciple of William Stanley Jevons, the 19th century British economist who argued that more efficient exploitation of a resource leads to increased demand for said resource. In theme and variations fashion, Owen applies the Jevons’ principle to waste disposal, public lighting, aviation, water supplies, and the claims of the ‘solar evangelists’.