Crazy Town: Episode 117. EVs on Speed: The Jevons Paradox Strikes Again

Jason Bradford (00:01):
I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller (00:03):
I'm Asher Miller.

Rob Dietz (00:04):
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where we drive our five ton electric Hummer 120 miles per hour to the store to pick up frozen corn dogs for dinner. Mainstream economists and environmentalists share something in common, both tend to tout efficiency, think better light bulbs as the solution to climate change and all our other environmental problems. But the little understood Jevons Paradox intervenes to overwhelm any progress that comes from improved efficiency. We skewer the efficiency gains of electric vehicles, lighting, and plenty of other sectors, and we cover ideas for avoiding the efficiency trap, including unveiling our new political platform, which is sure to take the country by storm.

Asher Miller (00:52):
Hey Jason. Hey Rob.

Jason Bradford (00:54):
Good to see you buddy.

Rob Dietz (00:54):
Hey Asher. How's it going?

Asher Miller (00:55):
Good.

Rob Dietz (00:56):
Good.

Asher Miller (00:56):
I was dreaming of warmer days, sunshine being hot, whatever. Thinking back on when my family went out to Sun River, which is east of us here in Oregon.

Jason Bradford (01:06):
Sun River!

Asher Miller (01:08):
Yeah. This beautiful river that runs through, you can go rafting. So one day it was really hot. We went down to the river and we're going to go rafting and there was a car parked there. It was a Tesla. And I walked by it and I realized that they had left the air conditioning on. They just left the car on running to keep the car cool in the heat until they came back from rafting.

Jason Bradford (01:30):
Three hours of rafting or whatever. That's kind of absurd.

Asher Miller (01:33):
I was just like, is this what we were going after with this whole EV thing? This is what it's all about

Jason Bradford (01:39):
You wouldn't do that if it was an internal combustion engine going on, but you feel -

Asher Miller (01:43):
Well some people might, but --

Jason Bradford (01:44):
I mean at a parking lot outside Walmart maybe.

Asher Miller (01:46):
They didn't think that they're doing anything bad for the environment. So I wanted to talk about EVs for a little bit if that's cool.

Jason Bradford (01:53):
Oh yeah.

Asher Miller (01:54):
We all drive EVs. Let's just be honest. Raise up our hands and say we all -

Jason Bradford (01:59):
When I borrow my family's car. Yeah.

Asher Miller (02:01):
Okay. Well, you have an EV in your family. I have one. We're not anti-EV necessarily as people, but there's something going on with EVs right now, which is there's a whole bunch of models coming online and something is happening with them, which is a lot of fixation on power. So there's a great piece actually that was published in Wired magazine called "EVs have Gotten Too Powerful," and it talks about how there are all these super cars that have EV versions or fully EV Lotus, Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, others where these EVs can go like 200 miles per hour. They can go zero to 60 in two seconds.

Rob Dietz (02:38):
Two seconds is like amusement park scary. I remember getting on a ride that was - You know, most rollercoasters, they take you up a huge hill and drop you down, but this one, it just started on a slingshot. You get in the car and it blasts you off and did those stats, zero to 60 in two seconds.

Jason Bradford (02:57):
Yes, they advertise this.

Asher Miller (02:59):
It's like GForce on your face.

Rob Dietz (03:00):
It is, and my guts felt like I was going down a huge hill. So it's like if you drive this car, you hit the pedal to the metal, it's like an amusement park ride.

Asher Miller (03:09):
Here's another crazy one. China's apparently making a whole bunch of EVs now and really hitting the market. They're cheap, right?

Jason Bradford (03:16):
Yeah.

Asher Miller (03:17):
They're actually, I think, starting to penetrate in Europe and other places. The main company, BYD, they made an electric vehicle called the U nine that could hit 293 miles per hour.

Rob Dietz (03:30):
Very safe at that speed.

Asher Miller (03:32):
 How fast have you guys gotten, honestly, in a car?

Jason Bradford (03:35):
Oh I've gotten 113, maybe. I was on the autobahn in Europe in a saw turbo.

Asher Miller (03:41):
Were you driving it?

Jason Bradford (03:42):
I was driving it.

Asher Miller (03:42):
You were driving it, okay.

Jason Bradford (03:43):
Yeah, and then this Mercedes sedan, emerald Green came on my tail at 135 pissed that I wasn't in the right lane.

Asher Miller (03:51):
Yeah. God forbid. What .have you done, Rob?

Rob Dietz (03:54):
I think I've been to about that 115, 120. My friend, when I was a high schooler, he bought a used cop car at auction and so - And he was a pretty good driver, but that's pretty, pretty damn unsafe anyway.

Jason Bradford (04:09):
17-year-old kids going 120.

Asher Miller (04:11):
I've gone over like a hundred, I think, on I5. It would be a bit nerve wracking. Image 293 mph.

Rob Dietz (04:18):
I mean most professional race car drivers wouldn't feel comfortable at that speed.

Asher Miller (04:23):
But it's not just these supercars, right, that are kind of sold as sports cars or whatever. Regular cars that are EVs are amazingly powerful and the technology is incredible, but you've got to wonder about it. The Volvo has an urban electric vehicle called the EX 30, 2 motors., all wheel drive, can do zero to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds, which is, just think about this. That's a full second faster than a Porsche, like a traditional Porsche 911, right? That's crazy.

Rob Dietz (04:58):
Here we're talking about this rapid increase in power, but man, these fricking things are heavy too. I looked up in the Kelly Blue book had this interesting little table with the heaviest electric vehicles of 2025, and I'll just give you guys a few of the winners. So coming in fourth place is the Tesla cyber truck at 6,600 pounds. You got the Rivian R1T at 7,100 pounds.
(05:32):
I see a lot of those around.

Asher Miller (05:34):
Yeah, they're a lot of those around.

Rob Dietz (05:35):
Then we've got the GMC, Sierra EV Denali. Remember we did that episode where we talked about how you'd name vehicles after the things they're destroying.

Jason Bradford (05:44):
This is named after the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Denali.

Asher Miller (05:48):
It's not Denali anymore. They changed it back to Mount McKinley.

Jason Bradford (05:52):
McKinley. Good, good, good, good, good.

Rob Dietz (05:53):
And at 8,900 pounds -

Jason Bradford (05:55):
Okay, weighs as much as Denali.

Rob Dietz (05:57):
And as usual, the winner goes to that venerated car company Hummer which has an SUV that's almost 10,000 pounds, 9,700 pounds.

Jason Bradford (06:09):
One of the main reasons, or maybe the reason these cars weigh so much is because an EV battery might weigh 2,000, almost 3000 pounds. And so then if the battery weighs that much, you also then have to beef up every other component of the car to handle the weight of just the battery.

Rob Dietz (06:28):
Well, I think if we're talking about weight, we've got to talk about the lighter vehicles too, which I have to go to the bike. Like a bike outfitted with fenders and racks and so, that's about 25 pounds. That's 388 bikes per Hummer.

Jason Bradford (06:45):
Yeah, 388 people could fit on bikes.
(06:49):
Although maybe apples to apples, we should be looking at e-bikes because the Hummer's powered, the e-bike is powered, so that's maybe 50 pounds. So you really only get 194 bikes per Hummer.
(07:00):
Okay. I think that's more fair.

Asher Miller (07:01):
So what you're saying is you could have 200 people on electric bikes for the same, effectively the same, weight as one Hummer.

Jason Bradford (07:11):
Which maybe has six people in it or eight maybe even if you stuff it. I don't know.

Asher Miller (07:15):
Let's be honest.

Jason Bradford (07:15):
Mostly you're driving by yourself.

Asher Miller (07:16):
One person.

Jason Bradford (07:17):
Yeah, one or two, and a dog.

Asher Miller (07:19):
Yeah, maybe.

Jason Bradford (07:19):
Yeah.

Asher Miller (07:21):
The reason I want to bring this up is it's back to that example I gave of that Tesla, right? Just like because they can, it feels like it's not polluting to the environment. They're just going to leave the fucking AC on for three hours.

Rob Dietz (07:35):
Can we just bask in the ridiculousness a little longer? They couldn't stomach the two minutes it would take for the car to cool back down if they turned the AC on when they got to it.

Jason Bradford (07:48):
And I'm telling you, so my son has an electric vehicle, the speed at which not only it goes from zero to 60, but it goes from what, 98 degrees to 70 degrees in the cab is remarkable. The AC and the heating is incredibly powerful too. It's like that was amped up.

Rob Dietz (08:08):
So if you are going at maximum speed, like taking off from zero to 60 and you run that AC at the set, do you actually go back in time?

Asher Miller (08:19):
Good question.

Jason Bradford (08:19):
You m ight. Yeah.

Asher Miller (08:21):
People have touted the efficiency gains of electric vehicles over internal combustion engine vehicles. It's not just a matter of what comes out of the tailpipe, right? They're just much more efficient in how they use energy to work. But what we're seeing here is kind of the wrong type of efficiency. We're thinking about in the case of all these cars going super fast, how quickly can you go zero to 60 or a hundred miles per hour or 293 miles per hour? It's all about the efficiency of time, how quickly you can get from one spot to the other. It's not about the resource efficiency.

Jason Bradford (08:59):
So then time efficiency, really. The real term in physics is then power, right? They're caring about doing work very quickly and that's power. But the irony of course is that you accelerate at incredible speeds and you emerge onto a crowded freeway.

Asher Miller (09:15):
And sit around.

Jason Bradford (09:16):
Yeah.

Asher Miller (09:16):
So if we were going to think about measuring things differently instead of how fast the thing can go or even the distance, maybe. It's thinking about the distance traveled per energy input into it. So if we think about it as how much energy is actually being consumed.

Jason Bradford (09:34):
Let do this in metric system. Help us out.

Asher Miller (09:37):
Okay, well, so let's talk about kilometers, right?

Jason Bradford (09:39):
Okay, that's metric. Yes.

Asher Miller (09:40):
And we can talk about joules or megajoules.

Jason Bradford (09:42):
Those are metrics.

Asher Miller (09:43):
And so if we compare, actually Wikipedia has this interesting table that they compiled.

Jason Bradford (09:48):
Love Wikipedia.

Asher Miller (09:49):
Of different forms of transportation, including somebody walking. On their list, the worst passenger vehicle in terms of energy efficiency on their list is the Bugatti Veron.

Jason Bradford (09:59):
I'm going to look that up.

Asher Miller (10:00):
Which I don't even know how much it costs, but it's like a supercar and it probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. So what do you get for those hundreds of thousands of dollars? You get something that goes 0.12 kilometers per megajoule. Okay? Now I know our listeners could be like, what the fuck is a megajoule? What does that mean? What it matters here is just a comparison. Okay? So if you keep that number in your mind, 0.12 kilometers per megajoule. Well, let's talk about the Hummer EV. Okay? The one you were just talking about that weighs almost 10,000 pounds. So you take the Hummer EV SUV, that's 0.7 kilometers per megajoule, so that's almost six times more efficient than the Bugatti.

Jason Bradford (10:44):
But the Bugatti is so much cooler. If you looked at a picture of it.

Asher Miller (10:49):
And how much does it cost, dude?

Jason Bradford (10:50):
I haven't figured that out. They don't make that many of them.

Rob Dietz (10:52):
Yeah. They're not going to tell you either. That's to be negotiated at the shop.

Asher Miller (10:56):
Yeah. If you are not rich enough that you have to ask, then you're not going to be able to be able to get it.

Rob Dietz (11:00):
Exactly.

Jason Bradford (11:01):
Oh my god, it's badass.

Asher Miller (11:04):
We lost Jason. Okay, so the Hummer EV, that's almost six times more efficient than the Bugatti. Great.

Rob Dietz (11:10):
And really efficient. I mean, look at it. It can get 0.7 kilometers off of that megajoule. Well, back to my example of the bike, my favorite piece of technology that humanity has ever invented. It'll go nine kilometers per megajoule. So that's almost 13 times more efficient than the fricking Hummer. And I mean I think about this all the time, like a bike, maybe I'll go back to English terms for a sec. You need 43 kilocalories, which we often just call calories in food. You need 43 kilocalories to go a mile or 1.6K. So basically you got to eat half an apple or maybe a little less than that to go nine kilometers. When you put half an apple into a Hummer, you just don't get anywhere.

Asher Miller (11:57):
Well, what if you put it in the DeLorean? Remember the DeLorean from Back to the Future?

Rob Dietz (12:03):
Yes. In fact, I think we've screwed up. The bike is not the most efficient vehicle ever. It's that DeLorean. You put the stuff in the Mr Fusion and suddenly you're in a whole nother era.

Asher Miller (12:12):
Yeah, it's like apples, banana peels, whatever.

Jason Bradford (12:15):
God, the DeLorean looked like crap compared to the Bugatti though. Have you seen the Bugatti?
(12:25):
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Asher Miller (13:30):
So we've been talking about these outrageous things that people are doing with their EVs, right? Souping them up, making 'em go fast. It's a shining example of a phenomenon that relates to energy and efficiency that people have talked about for a long time named after a guy named William Stanley Jevons, Jevons P Paradox. So I thought maybe we could talk about that a little bit.

Jason Bradford (13:52):
Yeah, so William Stanley Jevons was a British economist, and this was in 1865. He wrote a book called, "The Coal Question," and he was worried about Britain's power and influence that it might fade as the coal got used up. And it's interesting, you can read his book online for free and he actually covers a lot of stuff we discuss here in Crazy Town about limits to growth overshoot and your return on invested and renewable energy alternatives. But what stuck around with his name is this Jevons Paradox. And it's related to something called rebound effect, which we'll get into a bit. Here's what he said verbatim. "It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth." And so he gave an example of this with coal. So if you get some technological advance that makes it possible for blast furnace to produce iron with less coal, profits go up, the higher profits mean there's more investment in iron production possible. So you get more iron coming out, so the price of iron falls. This then stimulates actually more demand for iron. And so Jevons concludes that the greater number of furnaces will more than make up for the diminished consumption of each. Even though each furnace is using less coal to make iron, you've now expanded the number of furnaces and the much amount of iron out there being used.

Asher Miller (15:24):
You could actually look at, if you take an example of an EV even the Tesla that I was talking about before, if that car is more efficient in its use of energy, right? In this case it's using electricity, then what ends up happening oftentimes is not only is those gains put into making sure that the car can go that much faster, but also all these other things. You see these displays that they now have in cars and all of these new electric vehicles that they're rolling out with 26 different motors on their chairs that they can swivel around, do all this stuff. So it's an example of a microcosm that yeah, just because it's more efficient doesn't mean you're using less, right? You're finding other ways to use it, but there's -

Rob Dietz (16:03):
Shouldn't Tesla just keep their cars between 68 and 72 degrees at all times all the time? Don't even let the user have a say in it.

Asher Miller (16:13):
Sure. I'm sure they would be open to that. You talked for a second about the rebound effect, Jason, and I think that we should just say for the record that Jevons paradox is sometimes used interchangeably with the term rebound effect. And just to be clear, the rebound effect is really about broader economic dynamics where efficiency gains in one area will be redirected to contribute to overall growth and resource consumption of the larger economic system.

Jason Bradford (16:41):
Right.

Rob Dietz (16:42):
Well, I was wondering if we can take that, take the Jevons paradox and take the rebound effect and think of some of our favorite examples that we see happening out here in the real world. Beyond the whole EV car thing, which blows the mind a little bit. But the one that really hit me was refrigeration. Now this seems a little boring, but hear me out because refrigeration is a pretty important thing in the human development and the whole way our food system works. And refrigerators have gotten way better. I remember my family, we used to take this vacation and we had this same summer rental every year and the refrigerator was something from before I was born. It had this crazy latch on the front and the ice compartment was always almost full of ice, just like there's no defrost on the thing. And that latch is what actually held the thing shut tightly. Well, if you go inspect a modern refrigerator, you got this magnetic strip that seals it really well. That latch did not do the job, and if you ever smashed your finger in there, you weren't getting it back. They've gotten a lot more energy efficient and as that's happened, of course they've gotten cheaper. And so what happens, households now have huge refrigerators, or all the time people are selling 'em on Facebook marketplace or whatever. Oh, just replaced my beer refrigerator in the garage and the beer case with a new bigger one so come buy this.

Asher Miller (18:14):
I have a walk-in refrigerator. You guys have been in there. We sometimes do meetings in there.

Jason Bradford (18:19):
Do you want to keep 'em short?

Asher Miller (18:19):
Yeah. And I got one of those couches that actually has a refrigerator built into it. It was like a La-Z-Boy recliner where the refrigerator is just underneath your ass so you can just pop the door up.

Rob Dietz (18:30):
This also expands out into the rebound effect because as people can have better refrigerators in the home, you can have more refrigerated products. The demand for that goes up. So now you've got stores with huge refrigerated sections. I mean, you've got to wear a Patagonia down winter coat just to go shopping anymore to stay warm. They're cooling the entire space and you've got trucks running around carrying food -

Asher Miller (18:56):
Refrigerated food.

Rob Dietz (18:56):
Refrigerated on the highways,

Jason Bradford (18:58):
And then the warehouses have to be refrigerated that the trucks are pulling up to. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Asher Miller (19:04):
Well we've talked about this before with storage, right? Now you can get refrigerated storage units for your things.

Jason Bradford (19:10):
Sure. Right.

Asher Miller (19:11):
Have air conditioned places for parking your car, which is great.

Jason Bradford (19:14):
Yes, your Bugattis.

Rob Dietz (19:16):
It's like our episode that we did a long time ago on a positive feedback loop. That's happening here, right? This demand begets that demand. Now that we're doing this, we've got to do that.

Asher Miller (19:26):
But it's true. If you think about it, the relationship between refrigerators getting bigger and Costco's and Walmart's existing.

Rob Dietz (19:33):
Yup.

Asher Miller (19:34):
Like a direct relationship there, right? Because if you didn't have room to store all that shit, they wouldn't sell so much of it in these huge quantities.

Rob Dietz (19:42):
I know. When I put a 17 gallon jar of mayonnaise -

Asher Miller (19:46):
Haha. 17 gallon.

Rob Dietz (19:48):
In my walk-in refrigerator, you know?

Asher Miller (19:53):
That sounds so tasty. Let's talk about lighting. Oh, because we've actually seen tremendous gains in lighting efficiency just in the last decade or so. So we had incandescent lights for a long time, not a lot of advances there, but then we got for a nanosecond, we had compact fluorescent light bulbs in both of those.

Rob Dietz (20:15):
And I used to really like to drink the mercury out of those.

Asher Miller (20:18):
There are actually lots of fears that people had. If you dropped it, what would you do because there was mercury inside. Anyways, that problem went away because LEDs came around and they're much more efficient.

Jason Bradford (20:30):
Unbelievable.

Asher Miller (20:30):
It's incredible. But what did we see? We see increased use of lighting all over the place, including at night. And one of the things that -

Jason Bradford (20:39):
That's usually when people light stuff up, actually.

Asher Miller (20:40):
Thanks. No, but you know what I'm saying. Keeping lights on all the time.

Jason Bradford (20:45):
All the time. Outdoor lighting and stuff all the time.

Asher Miller (20:48):
And having more of it because it's cheap, right?

Jason Bradford (20:50):
Yes.

Asher Miller (20:51):
So what ends up happening is we're seeing in just the course of a decade within that timeframe, you look at satellite photos of cities who have transitioned their public lighting from more traditional forms of lighting to LEDs. Now the brightness of them is so much stronger that you could see it from space and it's actually having impacts on the natural world in pretty profound way.

Rob Dietz (21:15):
They're lighting up space too. Sure. They're just floating lights around the earth. My favorite is the billboards.

Asher Miller (21:21):
Yeah.

Rob Dietz (21:21):
You know how freaking many lights they put on these billboards? And I'm sure you can drive around and find a billboard that's advertising efficient LED lighting as its product.

Jason Bradford (21:32):
You know what I don't see anymore that I miss kind of? Remember search lights. Remember every once in a while there'd be some car lot, they would rent a search light and just -

Asher Miller (21:40):
Or a movie theater. They were having a premiere or something like that.

Jason Bradford (21:43):
Yeah, the clouds would be lit up from stuff.

Asher Miller (21:46):
We can't see them now.

Jason Bradford (21:46):
Yeah, it'd be like the Batman episode.

Rob Dietz (21:48):
Why aren't they doing that because they're cheap, LEDs.

Jason Bradford (21:50):
I don't know. It's like they went out of style.

Asher Miller (21:50):
It's like because you can't see them because there's so much lighting now. You won't be able to see it in the sky.

Jason Bradford (21:56):
But okay, so your example makes me think of Chevy Chase in Vacation, The Christmas Vacation. Was there one where he's putting the lights up on the house? Right? Remember that one?

Asher Miller (22:08):
It's so bright. Can't figure out how to turn it on.

Jason Bradford (22:10):
And then the power busts. He wouldn't have that problem today because the LeD is so efficient. The other thing that makes me think about is one of the greatest movies of all time was "European Vacation."

Rob Dietz (22:22):
That's a little bit debatable right there.

Jason Bradford (22:25):
Okay.

Asher Miller (22:25):
There's some good scenes in that.

Jason Bradford (22:26):
Well here's the thing. In the original Vacation, they're in a station wagon and they're driving across the US, but because of efficiency gains, airline travel got a lot less expensive. Planes got lighter, they got more fuel efficient, manufacturing got more efficient, there were more planes being built.

Asher Miller (22:46):
Figured out how to shove more people on.

Jason Bradford (22:46):
Shove more people inside. So now the average family could afford a European vacation. So they level up from their station wagon trip to a European vacation. And this is another great example of the rebound effect I'd say.

Asher Miller (23:01):
Even just in the sense of, Hey, I'm saving money on my lighting, my home lighting or my home heating or whatever. Because I've saved that money, what am I going to use it for? I'm going to use it to get on a plane or on a cruise ship or whatever it is, right?

Jason Bradford (23:16):
Yes.

Asher Miller (23:18):
That's progress baby.

Jason Bradford (23:18):
One of the greatest movies.

Asher Miller (23:21):
Thank you, energy efficiency.

Rob Dietz (23:23):
It won best picture in 1986, right?

Jason Bradford (23:26):
Probably.

Rob Dietz (23:26):
Here in Crazy Town, we love hearing from listeners who are doing things out there. Sometimes good work, sometimes artistic expression. We share these in the hopes that maybe you'll find some inspiration or something to think about. Asher, you've got something that you received an email recently?

Asher Miller (23:52):
Yeah. I've got to say my ego has grown exponentially to -

Rob Dietz (23:56):
I didn't know that was possible.

Asher Miller (23:58):
I know. This is not a finite thing. I know we live on a finite planet up at the size of my ego is not finite. We were contacted by a guy named Michael Balcomb and he actually created a song based on a paper that Richard Weinberg and I co-wrote called "Welcome to the Great Unraveling." So that's the title of the song as well. I've always wanted to be someone's muse. I didn't know that it would come in this form, but there you have it.

Rob Dietz (24:24):
Well, I did listen to the song and it's surprisingly catchy and very interesting, the lyrics.

Asher Miller (24:32):
You're saying surprising because me as the muse, you would think it would not be catchy.

Rob Dietz (24:36):
Well, you as the muse, yeah. Also, full disclosure, Michael used AI to create this song and I'm a little conflicted about that, but I'm going to let you talk about that. But I've got to say, I found the song very catchy and I thought it was kind of a mashup between Pink Floyd and this is going to be a deep cut. Men without hats. Remember they had the one hit wonder safety dance? I don't know. The voice in the song reminded me of them.

Asher Miller (25:03):
Oh, interesting.

Rob Dietz (25:03):
But with a Pink Floyd vibe.

Asher Miller (25:06):
I'll have to ask Michael if that was the prompt he put into the AI machine. I don't honestly know. I didn't get a chance to ask Michael how involved he was in the writing of the lyrics or any of the music stuff. It is weird to get an AI song because it's something that we've talked about. AI. We actually did an episode, an interview with Brian Merchant talking about the Neo Luddite movement. I would probably call myself a Neo Luddite. So my tendency would be to prefer to go to some small pub in the west coast of Ireland and listen to people playing on old mandolins or something. But I will give him credit for taking in the information and wanting to put out a message to the world. And I think in some ways we may not actively want to participate in the use of technology in quite that way, but I am sure this song wouldn't have been written if it wasn't for AI. So I don't know that it put anyone out of business. And if it's catchy and it gets people's ears and we get some new people who that we could depress the hell out of, out of it. Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.

Rob Dietz (26:16):
Well, we're going to play this song at the end of the episode and we'll link to Michael's page where he has posted some other music that he's developed. I appreciate, Asher, how you talking about how we feel conflicted about AI. And for those of you listening, if you check out the song, please let us know your views on it, any moral issues you have or what you think of the song, just drop that in the comments and we'll be sure to take a look.

Asher Miller (26:43):
Now, our listeners are just going to fast forward past the rest of this episode. Stop listening to us so they can get to the "Welcome the Great Unraveling.

Rob Dietz (26:58):
So some of the staunchest enviros out there, they recommend getting more efficient and that's how you're going to solve our environmental problems. And we're here to tell you that's a trap. Jevons was here to tell you that's a trap. It's a trap. So, how do we stop from falling into this efficiency trap? And I think the very first way and maybe the most important way is to hone your systems thinking skills. So when something becomes more efficient and it becomes cheaper, there's not this simple linear relationship. Jevons was thinking in systems. As you were explaining Jason, if efficiency in iron production improves, you need less coal to achieve the same results. And so linear thinking would say, great, then we'll just use less coal. But with systems thinking, you've got to go a lot farther. You got to look at those relationships that you described. You need less coal to achieve the same iron production, but that means, hey, more profit. Now I can produce more iron, more demand for iron, blah, blah, blah. I whine about economists all the time and their failings and how crappy some of the stuff they do, but they're pretty good at this whole systems relationships, at least the ones that involve money.

Asher Miller (28:15):
Not the environmental systems.

Rob Dietz (28:17):
No, no. So if you want to get real about what's going to happen if you have an efficiency gain, you've got to think in systems. You've got to think the relationships. How does this thing affect that thing, and how do those relationships build on each other?

Asher Miller (28:32):
I have to say there are maybe ways that we could intervene actually at a system scale when you think about this. And a good example of that is the difference between maybe having a price on carbon and having basically a price on the consumption of resources or even BTUs or whatever it is. Because when you get it down to the source, then it maybe addresses the issue of, oh, well you've gained efficiency in this one area of the economy, you're just going to use it elsewhere. Unfortunately, I don't think we live in a world politically where we're going to have a price on anything like that anytime soon.

Rob Dietz (29:08):
Well, put the idea out and when the crisis gets bad enough, maybe.

Asher Miller (29:12):
But let's talk about how hard this is to kind of think in broader systems. Because even that article I was mentioning about in Wired, which is I thought a really good article, the author was questioning sort of the wisdom of making cars go so fucking fast. Is that really the smartest thing? And I'm going to quote, he said, back to the Mercedes AMGGTXX, which is one of these -
(29:38):
Don't look it up, Jason!
(29:39):
These cars, right? He points out that it quote, "Features a new battery cell chemistry that allows it to charge at up to 850 kilowatts. That's a game changer right there in tantalizing lead promises, recharging in mere minutes.

Rob Dietz (29:55):
That's an insane number.

Asher Miller (29:56):
Hold on. I'm going to finish. Quote, "Isn't the speed at which you can recharge more meaningful in the real world than the speed at which you can hit 60 miles per hour?" Yes, but if you're thinking in systems . . .

Rob Dietz (30:11):
Right. What kind of high voltage electric computing device do I got to have at my house in order to charge that car?

Asher Miller (30:20):
850 Kilowatts.

Jason Bradford (30:20):
Well, let's imagine. Okay, the reason you need at your house is because it takes hours to recharge now. Now let's say you could recharge in a few minutes. We can use filling stations. But here's the deal, if you've got eight outlets at a filling station, which would be a typical filling station, that's like eight megawatts of power needs to go to that filling station. Eight megawatts of power is a lot. Eight megawatts is delivering power to a thousand households.

Rob Dietz (30:48):
So for every electric car charger, we need a nuclear power plant is what you're saying.

Asher Miller (30:55):
Well that's the thing is we need one of those closet size nuclear reactors in everyone's house and then we'd be totally fine, right?

Jason Bradford (31:01):
Yeah. So I mean the greater Corvallis area has about 20 filling stations right now. So if you can imagine replacing those with just all these eight megawatt things, it's almost like adding 20,000 households to Corvallis in terms of electricity demand. And so it is nuts. There's like 30,000 households in the Corvallis area. So he didn't think of the repercussions of what an eight megawatt power supply to a filling station is like. It's just insanity.

Asher Miller (31:33):
I now would also say -

Jason Bradford (31:34):
It's like a big factory. It's just -

Asher Miller (31:36):
Stepping back. the problem trying to be solved here, which I think is a real problem that people are concerned about in terms of EV substitution of eternal combustion engine. So I think we would agree if we're going to be driving personal vehicle passenger vehicles, normally you'd say driving EVs better than driving an internal combustion engine car. Let's say all else being equal, okay? So people focused on that substitution would say one of the big barriers has to do with charging. So having enough charging stations around or people having charging stations at home. And then there's the speed thing.

Jason Bradford (32:15):
You've got to solve that problem. Now got to solve that problem.

Asher Miller (32:16):
When I drove down from Oregon to Northern California to go to a meeting back in March, I decided to drive the car instead of flying down there, okay. In my little bolt. And I had to stop quite regularly every 200ish miles to be conservative, to be safe. And the only places I could stop were at these fucking Walmart superstore because that's the only places that had these charging stations.

Jason Bradford (32:40):
Yeah, it's annoying.

Asher Miller (32:41):
And I had to wait, you know, like an hour to charge.

Jason Bradford (32:44):
So you just go shopping.

Asher Miller (32:45):
Yeah. Well that's the win-win of this economy, right? I could go buy things at Walmart, but you could see why people are thinking, well, we have to make sure that it could be as quick as when you fill your car with gasoline. Why? Why does it have to be that fast?

Rob Dietz (33:02):
Well, I don't mean to be the guy that always comes back to the same topic, but how long does it take you to eat half an apple? A few seconds?

Asher Miller (33:11):
Yeah, not too long.

Rob Dietz (33:12):
So that's how you fuel up for the bike instead of whatever. That's even faster than the, what was it?The 8,500 kilowatt Mercedes can fill up.

Asher Miller (33:23):
Yeah, I would say true, but we can also slow down a little bit, right?

Rob Dietz (33:30):
Yeah. I mean if I'm the audience for this, I am the choir. I would love it if we didn't have to get from point A to point B on the strictest time schedule. Can we spend some more time?

Jason Bradford (33:45):
Yes. And so I guess the dilemma becomes, on an individual at a household scale, how do you not do what the Griswolds did? The Griswolds -

Asher Miller (33:54):
Go to Europe.

Jason Bradford (33:55):
Saved money because the economy got more efficient and they just spent it on then going to Europe or whatever, or doing more grandiose things. So you have to put limits on yourself I guess since society's not, at this point, willing to help us. And there's ways of doing this. You can create your budgets for not just money but energy like the 2000 Watt Society does. You can look at your ecological footprint and try to sort of figure out like, hey, what ways can I keep that reduced? Here's what then becomes the problem. Let's imagine you are still earning the same amount of money and now suddenly have a lot of savings. What do you do with that savings?

Asher Miller (34:33):
Bitcoin. Bitcoin.

Jason Bradford (34:37):
What do you buy? What do buy?

Asher Miller (34:39):
Online gambling?

Rob Dietz (34:41):
You certainly shouldn't buy a Hummer EV. I mean, maybe unless you're replacing your Hummer internal combustion engine.

Jason Bradford (34:48):
Well, I'd like to turn this around a little bit because there's this buy nothing kind of movement, right? Don't be part of the consumer society. I think that's important, but I also think there's things we can do. I wouldn't mind spending a couple thousand dollars on Native prairie seeds and figuring out how I can use those to support biodiversity where I live. Can you figure out, okay, there are things that we can actually buy that we can invest in that are pro-life, in a sense, pro-future. And so I don't think it's bad to figure out what are those.

Rob Dietz (35:21):
You had me a little worried there when you start talking about things that are pro-life. That's not what this podcast is about. We're not -

Jason Bradford (35:27):
In many ways, it is, but not in the sense that you are trying to make it. Yeah.

Rob Dietz (35:31):
Well I think that yeah, it's important, as always, to see what can you do individually or at the household scale. But at the societal scale, how you get out of this efficiency trap is really quite similar. You have to have limits on the throughput of energy and materials. So if you got really efficient with the LED lighting or refrigeration or anything, if you had a quota on how much your city or your country could spend in terms of the total amount of energy, well then that efficiency gain is just a good thing all around. It's only when you allow the limits to be surpassed and then you're screwed. And then another way to get out of the efficiency trap is something you brought up earlier, Asher, which is what they refer to as wellhead taxes. So put your taxes on the thing that's causing the problem. In this case, fossil fuels in the mining. And if you tax that, then you're going to end up using less of it. The final thing you should do at the societal scale, which everybody wants to hear about, ties into what you were saying, Jason, at the household scale of buy nothing, which is rationing.

Jason Bradford (36:45):
Okay, so you're saying quota, tax, and ration.

Rob Dietz (36:49):
That's why I'm running for office.

Asher Miller (36:51):
That's the three legs of the stool of Rob's 2028 presidential campaign. Right there.

Jason Bradford (36:59):
God, we are so popular.

Asher Miller (37:00):
I cannot wait to be elected. You know, with all the admin power that the presidency has been accruing lately, do you know how many things I'm going to do?

Jason Bradford (37:08):
You can quota, tax, and ration like crazy. You'll be so popular. Oh my god, we've got a new political movement in this nation.

Asher Miller (37:17):
And we wonder why we have so many listeners to this podcast.

Rob Dietz (37:20):
Well, as soon as we get canceled for our shitty policies, we can sell our equipment and buy Jason some seeds. Thank you.

Melody Travers (37:32):
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app or just tell them face-to-face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.

Michael Balcomb's "The Great Unraveling" (38:02):
It's not just one thing, it's everything all at once and we saw it coming. Welcome to the great unraveling.We burn the past for power and speed. Chase more and more. Forget need. Build towers high on oil and sand. Now the tide is claiming back the land. Rivers choke and soil blows dry, species vanish, glaciers cry. Extinction grows from poison seed. We sow still we burn fossil gas, fire, glow. It's the great unraveling thread by thread we're systems fail and the warning spread. It's not just the heat or the flood or flame, it's the whole web of life calling out our name. But if we face the storm and learn to see, we can reweave the tapestry. The rich grow richer. The poor are blamed. The rules are rigged. The grand prizes claimed. Racism masked as law and pride. The scars of empire never died. From hunger lines to toxic well, plastic agro petrochemical hell. Authoritarian rise, they divide, conquer other with fear. Justice fades as they draw near. It's the great unraveling, loud and clear. When the truth we fear is here. It's not just collapse or feed back spin. It's what breaks out when greed breaks in. But if we face the pain and let love lead, we will survive and thrive to plant renewable region air rid of sea. The soil speaks, the data sighs. Ice melts beneath our lives. The stories now must serve the all to lift each life, not let it fall. Now's the time to break the chain, to compost loss and learn from pain. To see the whole, to grow with grace, to build resilience in community space. It's the great unraveling. All as stands. Hearts in ash. Dust in hands. It's not too late to change the game, to harvest sun and wave, not burn the big oil flame. To breathe and rise, hold the lines. To heal this world for tomorrow's shine. For tomorrow's shine. Tomorrow's shine. The future's not yet tailored. Flying threads spinning through our hands. Welcome to the great unraveling. Reweave the tapestry. Sing it now in three part harmony. One land, one sky, one sea. We are nature and nature are we. Abundance, profitability. Turn the poly crisis into the poly upper punity.