Library

By: Jennifer Chu

Subtitle: Researchers find no evidence of an overall reduction in the world's consumption of materials Summary: While some scientists believe that the world can achieve significant dematerialization through improvements in technology, a new study finds that technological advances alone will not bring about dematerialization and, ultimately, a sustainable world. The researchers found that no ma...

By: Ryan Gunderson, Sun-Jin Yun

Keywords: Low-carbon green growth; rebound effect; energy efficiency; eco-efficiency; degrowth; public participation

By: Tilman Santarius, Hans Jakob Walnum, Carlo Aall, Reinhard Madlener, Karen Turner, Johannes Buhl, José Acosta, Debalina Chakravarty, Joyashree Roy, Anja Peters, Elisabeth Dütschke, Martin Soland, Christine Suffolk, Wouter Poortinga, Petter Næss, C. Michael Hall, Kyrre Groven, Hans Jakob Walnum, Anders S.G. Andrae, Jørgen Nørgård, Jin Xue

The publisher about the book: This book calls for rethinking current climate, energy and sustainability policy-making by presenting new insights into the rebound phenomenon; i.e., the driving forces, mechanisms and extent of rebound effects and potential means of mitigating them. It pursues an innovative and novel approach to the political and scientific rebound discourse and hence, supplements...

By: Robert Fletcher

Teaser: Decoupling offers a dangerous neoliberal fantasy that we can overcome environmental limits to indefinite economic growth. From the article: . . . While asserting the necessity of dramatic decoupling for any hope of genuine sustainable development within a growth-dependent economy, in short, UNEP simultaneously admits that: 1) there is virtually no evidence that decoupling works; 2) t...

By: Jin Xue, Jørgen Nørgård

Abstract: Taking the simple equation: I(impact) = P(population) · A(affluence) · T(technology) as the point of departure, this chapter discusses the delusion of decoupling economic activities from environmental impacts by resorting to reduce eco-intensities through technological advancement alone. It is argued that the rebound effect is both a natural consequence of the growth dedicated societ...

By: Décroissance Bern

Ausgabe von «antidotincl.» von der Décroissance Bern mit Texten von Irmi Seidl und Angelika Zahrnt, Ernst Schmitter, Mathieu Glayre, Mirko Locatelli, Helmut Knolle, Andrea Vetter, Christa Ammann, Alessia Di Dio, Sofia Getzin, der Moins!-Redaktion, Markus Flück, Mirjam Bühler.

By: Harald Welzer

Teaser des Artikels: Die grünen Revolutionäre der siebziger Jahre träumten von einer besseren, umweltbewussten Gesellschaft. Heute betreiben wir Naturschutz mit den Mitteln des Kapitalismus. Das kann nicht gutgehen.

By: Tilman Santarius

Die Erhöhung der Energieeffizienz - durch LED-Lampen, Hybrid-Autos, Gebäudedämmung usw. - kann einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Nachhaltigkeit leisten. Doch welche 'unerwünschten Nebenfolgen' haben diese technischen Lösungen der Nachhaltigkeit? Im Mittelpunkt der Arbeit von Tilman Santarius steht die Frage, inwiefern Effizienzsteigerungen sogenannte Rebound-Effekte hervorbringen, die die Nachfrage n...

By: Christiane Kliemann

"Die momentane Diskussion um die Schuldigen bei VW und die Verbesserung der Regelwerke für die Messung von Autoabgaswerten bleibt jedoch nur an der Oberfläche und verfehlt den eigentlichen Punkt: dass die großen Konzerne in den Schlüsselbranchen der globalisierten kapitalistischen Wachstumswirtschaft – und somit auch die großen Autofirmen – verdammt sind zu wachsen oder sterben, was in beiden F...

By: Christiane Kliemann

"The ongoing discussion on identifying the culprits at Volkswagen and improving the general regulations for measuring car emissions remains at the surface and misses the real point: that the big players in the key industries of the globalized capitalist growth-economy – and thereby the big car companies – are doomed to grow or die which is disastrous in either case. As for the growth trajectory...

By: Johannes Buhl, José Acosta

Social acceleration, Time use, Working time, Life satisfaction, Mixed methods, Resource use

By: Almuth Ernsting

From the text: Zero-carbon, clean energy? Well, no. And yet, there are no large-scale energy sources with lower carbon emissions and less harmful environmental impacts than wind and solar power. As one scientist argues from the perspective of thermodynamics: "To talk about 'renewable energy' or 'sustainable energy' is an oxymoron, as is 'sustainable mining' or 'sustainable development.' The mor...

By: Reinhard Madlener, Wolfgang Sachs, Tilman Santarius, Bernd Draser, Andreas Exner, Ralph Hintemann, Matthias Laschke, Sarah Diefenbach, Marc Hassenzahl, Peter Hennicke, Stefan Thomas

Factory: Rebound-Effekte sind der Dämon der technologischen Effizienz: Ihretwegen sind die versprochenen Einsparungen an Ressourcen nicht so groß wie erwartet, teilweise werden sogar mehr als zuvor verbraucht. Ohne Obergrenzen und Lebensstil-Änderung wird der Dämon wohl nicht zu bändigen sein, heißt es im neuen factory-Magazin Rebound.

By: Mario Buenfil R.

Abstract: In developed and developing nations household water consumption increased exponentially during the last and present century; the same can be said of the individual water footprint of each inhabitant. The most worrisome part is not individual households and personal consumption, but the collective, aggregate, ones. There are nations in grave overshoot not only considering their total w...

By: Stefan Laser

Abstract: Debating socio-economic issues and practical strategies how to solve them habitually results in two opposing statements: (a) an economic-driven solution which almost blindly builds upon efficiency or (b) an overall critique of the growth-paradigm which specifically emphasizes unpredictable “rebound-effects”. Here, I suggest, one has to bring these two conflicting parties together by r...

By: Andrea Immendoerfer, Markus Winkelmann, Oliver Parodi, Collette Waitz

energy technologies, renewable energy, energy efficiency, sufficiency, neighbourhoods, rebound

By: Jorgen Norgard

Abstract: When analyzing environmental problems, it is useful to apply the following simple equation for the environmental impact ‘I’, here representing energy consumption: I = P·A·T, With ‘P’ representing population, ‘A’ affluence per capita, and ‘T’ resource intensity, i.e. energy per affluence ‘A’. All three factors are in the equation coupled to ‘I’, and in general we should avoid using the...

By: Hans Jakob Walnum

Rebound effects, critical realism, Interdisciplinary, socio technological structures

By: Tilman Santarius

Abstract: Research on rebound effects at the consumer level until today has been almost exclusively limited to the realm of economic sciences. Accordingly explanations of how rebound effects arise are restricted to economic theories, namely to income and substitution effects. This article analyzes rebound effects through the lenses of various social and behavioral science theories. The article ...

By: Johannes Buhl

Abstract: Worktime reduction is considered to be essential when it comes to theories and models of de-growing economies. So far, productivity gains are re-invested in favor of economic growth. Consequently, rising opportunity costs of time per growing national income lead to time rebound effects, since time savings become as precious as economic life speeds up. This comes with resource intensiv...