[throwaway894345]

With very few exceptions, any affordances technology brings are consumed by humanity's insatiable appetite before they can benefit the environment. If technology figures out how to make $X more energy efficient, we just run more $Xs such that the (trajectory of) energy consumption is constant.

[MattGaiser]

A big exception is energy. Net electricity usage per capita has leveled out or declined in the developed world since around the year 2000.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC?locat...

[alex_young]

Isn’t just counting the developed world missing the problem though? We also moved all of our manufacturing to the developing world at the same time and they saw a much greater increase.

Shipping stuff around the world and moving your pollution to Asia doesn’t do much good when we all share the same atmosphere.

[throwaway894345]

This is really interesting; I wasn't aware. That said, "per capita" is the wrong metric since we're discussing humanity in aggregate. I might still be wrong about energy in general, however. In any case, I think the broader principle holds.