The Rebound Trap: Why Efficiency Without Sufficiency Accelerates Ecological Overshoot
Evidence from two centuries of Jevons Paradox, modern data-center demand, and the fiscal architecture of post-growth policy The promise that efficiency will reduce aggregate resource consumption rests on an assumption that two centuries of evidence contradict. William Stanley Jevons demonstrated in 1865 that Britain’s coal consumption rose, not fell, as steam engines improved. This paper synthesizes historical and contemporary evidence to argue that the Jevons Paradox is not an anomaly but a structural feature of market economies in which unsatisfied demand meets falling unit costs. Global material extraction reached 106 billion tonnes in 2024, up from 30 billion in 1970, while fossil CO₂ emissions hit a record 37.4 billion tonnes . Data centers consumed 415 TWh in 2024 and are projected to reach 945 TWh by 2030, driven precisely by the cost reductions that efficiency delivers . Governments spent USD 916 billion supporting fossil fuels in 2024, reinforcing the very consumptio...