The Jevons Paradox from Gaia, Sixth Extinction Series by Gordon Lidl

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The Jevons Paradox, Marx, the Modern Left, Deep Greens, AI and Collapse.

by Gordon Lidl

I want to tell you a story about a painting, a large painting I finished two years ago as part of a series of works called Gaia, Sixth Extinction Series. I have written and published a few times on this subject but here I have gone back to my original notes from my sketchbook of the time. The Series was started due to my interest in climate change and biodiversity collapse when I read thousands of pages of published peer reviewed data by scientists and many recent books on the subject. I started with a view that it was a crisis but one that could be overcome by human intelligence and ability to adapt technology to avert disaster, and by doing obvious things like recycling, transitioning to ‘renewables’ removing fossil fuels; basically implementing the Green Transition.

Bright Greens keep telling us about we should overcome the crisis and adapt to a new paradigm, a Clean Green Future. The problem soon became apparent. The more I learned and understood about the problem, the less I knew, and the more I needed to learn. I learned that climate change is not an isolated crisis, that our general understanding was poor, and that the transition as widely understood is a sham. It is almost as if everyone were convinced there is a fix and everything is easy to switch. This is ego and hubris. The Crisis (capital ‘C’) is manifold, the solutions are complex and unless we dig deeper than popular memes amongst environmentalists and Greens, they will soon become insurmountable.

While I was planning paintings and woodcuts in the Series, I first came across a book called Deep Green Lies by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Kieth and Max Wilbert. Buy it or borrow it! Read it! It introduced me to the concept behind this painting and why my simplistic views were wrong. A larger more holistic approach is necessary. This book led me to diversify the art I was producing to a wider range of subjects, and the book also changed the way I write about Collapse. It took me back to reading previous literature, from right back to Gilgamesh (Humbaba and the Cedar Forest), through Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, via Marx and William Morris, through Rachel Carson, to modern peer reviewed science literature and current satellite data.

The combined crisis we face is as much about the human psyche as it is about the physical crisis, so now the series of works covers religion, climate change, ecocide, loss of biodiversity, habitat loss, refugees, war, economics, politics; the whole gamut of human interactions with Gaia. There is no particular style or school attached to the works. Each painting has a subject and each is treated according to the subject. Seven works are finished, with another seven in the studio in various stages.

So now let us discuss this particular painting, why it is important, how it relates to the Left, how it relates to Green issues, and how it relates to the writings of Marx and others throughout human history. The painting is called, The Jevons Paradox. When I showed the finished painting in a discussion on X in answer to a post by Michael Mann, director of the Centre for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, much quoted on climate science (the Hockey Stick Graph).

To my huge surprise, he blocked me, and the ensuing discussion between other scientists pushed my painting to number one on Google.

Since then, I keep being lectured by progressives and Bright Greens on how Green Energy is growing and we are transitioning away from fossil fuels and they complain: Why do you keep blaming Capitalism? They say: Green Energy is the way forward and by transitioning to Net Zero all will be well and the system can carry on. Business as usual (BAU)! They accuse me. They say the suggestion that all is not well with the Green Transition plays into the hands of climate change deniers. They link me to people paid by fossil fuel companies. They accuse me of using the same arguments as the paid corporate propagandists, muddying the waters, and pouring scorn on the Great Green Hope of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Well, they do this and I have to acknowledge it, but facts are facts, and physics is physics. Simply wishing for something is not the same as working toward a solution in reality. At this moment in time, our chance of reaching Net Zero as an actual reality, by 2050, is not feasible. It is a scam. Not true, not achievable. It is not going to happen, no matter what the shuffling of spreadsheet figures say, whatever computer models or AI engines predict.

Now we are being told by those who should know better, that we can replace the historic ghost acreage (fossil fuels) with new technology, basically a Green New Deal. Green Energy. A Green Transition. And we are also told that to question this mantra is to be siding with fossil fuel corporations, their propaganda arms and their think tanks.

This is far from the truth. The manufacturers of these items have much to do with the same companies. The wind turbines are made from polymers and steel made from oil, and with the ghost energy from oil and gas. The bases are huge concrete structures made using the same processes. The solar panels are mined using the same energy sources and manufactured in the same manner. Huge dams for hydroelectricity destroy rivers and their ecosystems. Clearcutting more forest with the same energy gobbling muscle machines to grow more food or bio-crops to use more ghost acreage. And, the resulting energy derived from these methods, is simply added to the previous ghost acreage, the historical bank drawdown. In short, no matter how much ‘new’ energy we find or create, or how much efficiency we squeeze from whichever course, we will use it to do more stuff, destroying the ecology and remaining life of the planet in the process.

So who was Jevons, and why does his work apply today? William Stanley Jevons was a bureaucrat working at the height of the Industrial Revolution. He was tasked by the government of the day with finding out how much coal we had left to continue and asked if making steam engines more efficient would make it last longer. He wrote a book called The Coal Question. It is very boring but let me explain. What Jevons found out was that the more efficient we made steam engines the more coal we used.

“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.”

William Stanley Jevons, 1865

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We used coal to do more stuff. And, we used more wood, the previous fuel. Since that time we have added oil and gas, but coal and wood use still went up. Then we added nuclear, Hydro, and every available fuel, but none of the previous fuel usage went down. Now, we have added wind and solar, but the others previously used still go up. You can see this in the graph from Our World in Data! Whatever energy source we find, we add it to the mix. This is why we haven’t even begun to address global warming and never will. Our civilization is built on energy and tempered toward rampant consumerism. Add this to the ignorance of our political elites, the wilful lies from the fossil fuel industries and corporations, it’s why we are already in the early stages of The Collapse.

A good example:

A 2 MW wind turbine is made up of: 260 tons of steel requiring, 300 tons of iron ore, 170 tons of coking coal, rare earths including Praseodymium (Pr), Neodymium (Nd), Terbium (Tb), and Dysprosium (Dy), fibre glass, resin, plastic, aluminium

…. all mined & produced using hydrocarbons. And all leaving a trail of destruction as they are mined, extracted and manufactured.

The other thing we have to remember is that climate change and ecological destruction is class war. The extractive industries which feed the production of commodities such as solar panels, which are to be installed in the Global North, have consequences, the results of which will be felt by the poor and indigenous before it encroaches on the rich. The frontline of the extraction industries are the Global South, and the ones to experience the first consequences are the same populations, usually poor, in colonial hands, or subject to colonial sanctions.

Running alongside these positions, there is an element of the Left, which I would call Blue Labour, or the socially conservative Left, who think of climate change as either a non-issue, or are actively sceptical. I put George Galloway in this category, where political issues rise above all else and planetary custodianship is seen as almost a non-issue. This is a dangerous position and sets political beliefs above and beyond physics. This has to be confronted head on.

For the avoidance of doubt, just let me underline my position here on climate change. It is very real and CO2 is a main driver, but not the only one. Climate change is only one symptom of our impact on the planet, Overshoot (of earth’s resources), destruction of eco-systems, pollution and biodiversity loss, all walk hand in hand. Climate change denial is rife as the fossil fuel corporations and their owners have deep pockets and can pay huge amounts of cash for propaganda.

Karl Marx himself new of the pollution effects of industrialisation and what it would do when he wrote the Grundrisse. Marx maintained his view that nature is the inorganic body of humanity—a source of life that must be maintained in a continuous interchange. He argued that capitalism breaks this connection, separating humans from their natural conditions. He discussed the Metabolic Rift (Stoffwechsel): The Grundrisse foreshadows the metabolic rift developed in Capital, describing how industrial agriculture and capitalism disrupt the circulation of matter between humanity and the soil. Marx noted that capital robs the soil of its nutrients, which are shipped away in food and clothing, preventing their return and leading to the exhaustion of soil fertility.

‘The whole of [Hegel’s] Logic is proof of the fact that abstract thought is nothing for itself…..and that only nature is something.’

Karl Marx

The Core Ideas behind the painting

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Jevons Paradox (1865): Named after economist William Stanley Jevons, this is the observation that increases in the efficiency of resource use (e.g., coal) often lead to an increase, not a decrease, in the overall consumption of that resource. A more efficient steam engine made coal more cost-effective, which spurred more widespread industrial use, ultimately increasing total coal consumption. It highlights how efficiency improvements can backfire at the systemic level by expanding the scale of production.

Marx’s Central Thought: Capitalism is a system driven by the relentless pursuit of surplus value (profit). This forces capitalists into perpetual accumulation and expansion of production. The system’s internal logic—competition, the need to reinvest profits, and the drive to dominate markets—makes infinite growth a necessity, not a choice.

The direct connection is capitalism’s Growth Imperative. The Jevons Paradox is not just a quirky observation about efficiency; it’s a symptom of the very dynamic Marx identified. Efficiency is a Weapon of Competition. For Marx, a capitalist who adopts a more efficient technology, like Jevons’s better steam engine, gains a temporary advantage. They can produce goods cheaper, undercut competitors, and capture more market share. However, this forces all competitors to eventually adopt the same or better technology to survive. The result is not a one-time saving of resources, but an overall expansion of productive capacity and output. Ergo, more energy use.

There is a Rebound Effect on a systemic scale: Marx would see Jevons Paradox as a classic example of the “rebound effect” inherent to capitalist competition. The savings from efficiency are not pocketed as a net reduction in resource use for society. Instead, they are reinvested into further accumulation—building more factories, producing more commodities, and finding new markets. The efficiency lowers the cost per unit, which can stimulate new demand, exactly as Jevons observed.

There’s also a link to Marx’s Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall. One counter-tactic against this tendency is to increase efficiency and productivity, what Marx calls raising relative surplus value. But this very process requires more massive investments in machinery and raw materials, increasing the organic composition of capital, which, in the long run, can exacerbate the crisis of profitability and compel even greater expansion to maintain mass profits.

The Deeper Philosophical Alignment: Critique of “Technological Solutionism”

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Both Jevons and Marx, in their own ways, challenge the naïve idea that technological progress alone can solve systemic social and ecological problems within capitalism.

Jevons showed that a purely technical fix (a more efficient engine) fails to curb consumption because it doesn’t account for economic behaviour. Marx would argue more fundamentally that technology is not neutral; it is developed and deployed within a specific set of social relations of production (capitalism). Its purpose is not to save resources or labor for the benefit of society, but to increase profit and control. Therefore, expecting the same system that creates ecological and social crises to technically innovate its way out of them is a profound contradiction. The Jevons Paradox is an empirical demonstration of this contradiction in the realm of resource use.

Key Difference in Focus and Prescription

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Marx and Jevon’s conclusions diverge sharply: Jevons remained a classical economist. He saw the Paradox as a policy dilemma, particularly for resource management (like British coal reserves). His concern was about scarcity and economic sustainability within the capitalist framework. In sharp contrast, Marx saw this dynamic as part of a deeper, irreconcilable contradiction. Capitalism’s need for infinite growth on a finite planet (though Marx didn’t use that exact phrase) creates what today we’d call an ecological crisis, alongside its social crises of exploitation and alienation. For Marx, the Jevons Paradox-like behaviour is not a policy bug but a systemic feature. The solution, therefore, is not better regulation alone, though that might help, but the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production itself and its replacement with a rationally planned system (socialism/communism) where production is for human need, not profit, and where efficiency could genuinely reduce toil and resource use.

Art, Labor, and Nature: The Vision of William Morris

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Where Marx provided the economic diagnosis, the painter, designer, and socialist William Morris provided the humanist and aesthetic prognosis. A contemporary of Marx who translated his works into English, Morris applied socialist theory to the environment and the arts. Morris argued that industrial capitalism degrades not only the worker but also the landscape. He saw the soot of London and the pollution of the rivers as direct consequences of “useless toil”—labor performed for profit rather than social use.

For Morris, there was no separation between art and nature. To destroy the beauty of the natural world was to destroy the wellspring of human creativity. In his utopian novel News from Nowhere, Morris envisioned a society where machinery was minimised, and labor was pleasurable and creative. He understood that biodiversity and ecological health are prerequisites for human happiness. A world stripped of birds, flowers, and clean water is a world stripped of art. Morris’s critique reminds us that the climate crisis is also a crisis of meaning. We are destroying the very conditions that make life beautiful and worth living. His vision suggests that saving the climate requires a revolution in how we work and what we value, shifting from the accumulation of things to the cultivation of well-being.

The Descent and Ascent: A Dantesque Allegory

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The gravity of this situation finds its most potent metaphor in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Our current trajectory mirrors the Inferno. Dante’s Hell is not merely a place of punishment but the logical endpoint of sin carried to its conclusion. In Canto XI of the Inferno, Dante categorises violence into three rings: against neighbours, against self, and against God. The third ring includes violence against nature and art (human industry). Those who commit violence against Nature are submerged in a burning desert under a rain of fire—a strikingly prescient image of a warming planet scorched by carbon.

Furthermore, the lowest circle of Hell, Cocytus, is a frozen lake where traitors are trapped. This ice is formed by the wind of Satan’s wings, representing the cold stagnation of a system that consumes itself. We are currently freezing in the ice of our own making, trapped by the paralysis of political inaction and the cold logic of profit over life.

However, Dante’s journey does not end in Hell. It moves through Purgatorio to Paradiso. Purgatorio represents the difficult, painful climb of repentance and correction. It is a mountain of effort, where souls must actively purge their vices. This mirrors the necessary transition away from fossil capitalism: it will require austerity, effort, and a restructuring of desire. We cannot buy our way out; we must climb.

Finally, Paradiso offers a vision of harmony. In Dante’s Heaven, will and power are perfectly aligned with the divine love that moves the sun and the other stars. Translated into ecological terms, Paradiso is a state where human economy is realigned with planetary boundaries. It is the healing of the metabolic rift. It is the world William Morris imagined, where human industry works in concert with natural cycles rather than against them.

Conclusion

The convergence of climate change, ecological collapse, and biodiversity loss is the result of a system that prioritises infinite growth on a finite planet. The Jevons Paradox demonstrates that technological efficiency within this system only accelerates the destruction. Marx’s concept of the metabolic rift reveals the structural rupture between capital and the earth. William Morris reminds us that this rupture destroys the beauty and dignity of human existence. And Dante provides the moral map: we are currently walking the circles of an economic and ecological Inferno.

To avert total collapse, we cannot rely on the same logic that created the crisis. We must descend into the roots of our economic system to uproot the drive for endless accumulation. We must ascend the mountain of Purgatory, accepting that limits are not punishments but conditions for life. Only by healing the metabolic rift and valuing the beauty of the living world can we hope to emerge from the burning desert and find, once more, the stars.

The Jevons Paradox can be seen as a specific, empirical economic mechanism that operationalises Marx’s broader historical-materialist critique of capitalism’s expansionist logic.

Marx provides the “why”: Capitalism’s engine runs on the compulsive pursuit of profit, requiring constant expansion.5

The Jevons Paradox illustrates the “how” in one critical domain: How the drive for efficiency (a key competitive tactic in that pursuit) can perversely lead to greater overall resource consumption, thwarting hopes for sustainable management.

Thus, modern ecological Marxists (like John Bellamy Foster) frequently invoke concepts like the Jevons Paradox to argue that capitalism is ecologically unsustainable by its very nature. It cannot “decouple” growth from environmental impact sufficiently because its internal logic constantly seeks to overcome limits, turning efficiency gains into new avenues for accumulation. In this view, understanding Jevons Paradox is essential to understanding the ecological crisis as a crisis of Capitalism. In this sense, the green transition as an intensification of the dynamics of neoliberalism.

AI as an addendum

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We have to mention AI and a word most of our political elites seem not to understand, ‘exponential’. We are at the early stages of AI implementation and this has huge ramifications across societies, not least in job replacement and redundant workers, but also in another respect much more pertinent to the Jevons Paradox. AI uses huge amounts of energy, so much so that Google are re-opening one of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactors, just to power part of their AI data centres. These data centres also use and compete for huge amounts of water for cooling the hardware stacks, having huge implications and competition for other water use, such as drinking water and crops. But the word that is never understood by our peers is the most dangerous one of all. AI growth, particularly as it becomes more widespread and ravenous, will become exponential.

The relationship between AI and the Jevons Paradox is a critical, real-time stress test for our planet. In short, AI efficiency gains are currently backfiring: they are dramatically lowering the cost of computing, which stimulates so much new demand that it overwhelms any environmental savings, accelerating climate change and resource depletion

While tech giants are investing heavily in renewables, they face an “unsolvable challenge”: it is virtually impossible to scale up low-carbon electricity fast enough to meet AI’s explosive growth while also decarbonising the rest of the economy . This creates a zero-sum game where AI’s hunger for clean power could crowd out other sectors’ efforts to decarbonise, locking us into fossil fuel dependence for longer.

It is need for more and more energy will simply illustrate the Jevons Paradox as a constant in our civilisation once again. Our civilisation is energy! The Left has to separate itself from Bright Greens who are addicted to civilisation as it stands, BAU, albeit with some small ‘tweaks’ to make it, in their words, ‘sustainable!’ This is a perversion of the actual. The Left also has to understand that clinging to re-industrialisation and avoidance of sustainability, of not understanding the ecological imperative of defending biodiversity and avoiding the ravages of Climate Change, which will lead to Overshoot and Collapse, has to be at the forefront of any movement for change. It cannot be an afterthought. The Left, whilst it still exists at all, has to be Greener that the Greens, whilst at the same time understanding our ‘civilisation’ has to be fundamentally restructured by, as Marx would have put it, a new ‘dialectic’, on class struggle and planetary protection.

Gaia needs a voice!

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Gordon is an artist, poet and writer of geopolitics and the environment. His earlier works can be seen at http://www.pictorignotus.com. He is currently working on a Series of works called Gaia, The Sixth Extinction Series. The painting The Jevons Paradox is a large work 3100 x 1550mm. Egg tempera on panel with oil glazes and over painting.