Increasing efficiency forever can’t reach zero waste for many physical processes, but I think people feel otherwise. Or fantasize.

When you hear about airplanes being made more efficient, or electric vehicles, computers, or whatever, do you think that if we keep making them more efficient, they’ll eventually not pollute?

In the graph below, where the green curve approaches the horizontal line, it will lower forever but never drop below a certain amount. This pattern happens when processes have physical limits, like flying, cooking, or heating. You can make them forever more efficient but they’ll never require zero energy or produce zero waste.

Then if you multiply their use by an exponentially growing economy or number of people using them, their total pollution continues to increase.

I feel like this point should be obvious, but I think a lot of people think we’re on track to reduce waste and pollution to zero.

• ← Hear me on the Power Hour from the Heritage Foundation