Reply #16: Nopity nope.

[Igel]

I you look at US carbon emissions over the last 40 years, you'll see that they've increased but not nearly as fast as economic growth.

In fact, if you factor out the usual consequences of economic growth to find the hypothetical energy usage given 0 growth you'd find that US carbon emissions dropped consistently over that time. Not because of regulation but because higher value stuff was made and because of increased energy efficiency. It's a nice conceit to think that the increased efficiency was what was mandated by the government, and if you look at the appliances, codes, and products mandated to be more efficient you do see very nice increases in efficiency--but if you look at other products and equipment that weren't regulated you see pretty much the same increases in efficiency. I've seen it analyzed as a kind of knock-on effect--X is regulated and more efficient so that drives increased efficiency in Y. Except that the increase in efficiency, like a lot of other things that could only be the result of laws and regulation, actually started before regulation was in place and increased with breakthroughs in technology that led to increased mandated efficiencies. Cart, horse.

In other words, while economic activity is linked with energy consumption, it's not a constant proportion.