From the article: It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does not necessarily increase the pressure on the world's reserves of natural resources and on its physical environment. Jesse Asubel has been looking at "dematerialization" for a long time[1] but it has only been relatively recently, now with a couple of decades of additional data to look at, that it is getting the attention I think it deserves.…
Buckminster Fuller made a similar observation or prediction even earlier, in the late 1930s. He called it ephemeralization, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeralization , the idea that increasing technological efficiency will allow us to do evermore with less. A possible counter-acting force is Jevon's paradox (a generalized economic form of Wirth's Law) but the linked empirical result suggests ephemeralization is…
In my experience, the Jevons Paradox seems to be more widely brandished than understood in internet debates about energy and resources [3]. If Alice claims e.g. that American electricity production is getting more efficient, Bob may "refute" her point by citing the Jevons Paradox without mustering evidence that the Jevons Paradox applies to recent trends in American electricity consumption.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
[3] Your comment did not misuse the Jevons Paradox. You noted that ephemeralization seems to be winning.