Digitalization, Efficiency and the Rebound Effect

Since the very beginning of modern growth-critique, the mainstream response to this critique has always been: “Well, we can grow the limits by making things ever more efficient”. Now, with the shiny user interface of the ongoing digital revolution, the holy grail of the efficiency revolution gets yet another new finish: By digitalizing almost every aspect of production and consumption we can increase our efficiency even more. However, in reality digitalization generates highly ambivalent effects on energy and resource consumption. Therefore, it needs a to be clearly embedded into social and environmental goals. See here the blog post by Tilman Santarius on degrwoth.de.