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by dane-pgp 1379 days ago
My point about the Jevons paradox is that if, for example, 10% of people stopped eating meat (for climate reasons), that could mean that the price of meat goes down, which would make meat more affordable for other potential consumers, so a different 10% of people might end up starting to eat meat.

That's an extreme example, but it's not impossible to imagine that there are low-income occasional meat-eaters out there who might start consuming more meat if the price went down. Maybe the increase wouldn't completely reverse the initial reduction, but if the net result was equivalent to only 5% of people changing their lifestyle, then we're talking about a very small change in CO2 emissions.

1 comments

So 'your thing doesn't work if I imagine that people instead do the opposite' as a rebuttal then?
I'm imagining that people will do the opposite because it is known that people usually buy more of a desirable commodity when its price goes down.

Of course there are limits to how much latent demand there is, and how price-sensitive consumers are, but it is not unreasonable for me to have raised this as a possibility.