Efficiency doesn’t tend to slow consumption. It usually accelerates it. Jevons Paradox is a 19th-century idea with very modern consequences. It was first described in the 1860s by Scottish economist William Stanley Jevons, who picked up on something counterintuitive during the Industrial Revolution. As coal-powered steam engines became more efficient, Britain didn’t burn less coal as anticipated. The opposite happened. It burned more! All that efficiency made new uses economically viable....