An Assembly committee approved a bill Monday that would make California the first state in the nation to ban the sale of incandescent lightbulbs.
Another bass-ackwards move by the those people who get elected to the Legislature because they can never get real jobs. Yes, incandescent bulbs use more energy than those compact fluorescent thingumbobs. If everyone in the state -- nay, the country, the world! -- switched over, a noticeable dent would be made in greenhouse emissions. But so what? Energy costs money. Let people who would spend more to use incandescent bulbs go ahead and do so. Let people who don't mind looking like a fat pasty ghost who's prone to depression under fluorescent lighting make the more economical choice. It's no use mandating a specific technology. They should just do as they did with automobiles and decree that x-percent of light sources sold need to meet y and z efficiency requirements and let the market and its numerous clever technologists worry about details. Gad! What's with these frickin' Al Gore wannabe lawyers who think they're frickin' engineers?
24 comments:
I'm still laffing over the Sheryl Crow toilet paper thing.
But Don, that's not quite what they did with automobiles, is it? Before the step you mention, they first of all made laws stating very clearly and rather narrowly what would be considered an automobile in the first place, so you can't just knock something together in your garage and expect to take it out on the public highway. They didn't let the market decide in that case, any more than they let the market decide what the definition of a pork chop is, or "fresh" or "putrid" in the food industry.
I'm wondering why you're against this move. Where's the harm? Or is it just a government thing?
If libertarians were permitted to run this planet, we'd be living on a lump of coal by the end of this century.
"Libertarian" is anyway just a pretty way of saying "fuck you, Jack, I'm okay".
It's nothing to do with libertarianism. With regard to cars, the government sets emission and mileage standards, and lets the manufacturers meet those standards as they will. The government doesn't mandate specific technologies. But they are trying to do that with lightbulbs, and that's a mistake. Do not say, there shall be no more incandescents. Say instead, we will phase out bulbs that do not meet x efficiency standard. Who's to say the next great breakthrough in low-energy lighting technology won't be in some way incandescent, hence illegal under this proposal?
Let people who don't mind looking like a fat pasty ghost who's prone to depression under fluorescent lighting make the more economical choice.
Though I may resemble your remark, I replaced some incandescents with the new ones and could not see any difference, though I thought surely there would be.
True or False? The Ford Model "T" (fixin' to be 100 next year!) averaged 25 mpg.
Let people who don't mind looking like a fat pasty ghost who's prone to depression under fluorescent lighting make the more economical choice.
Uh oh.
averaged 25 mpg
True. Maybe better. We only became hogs when our post-WWII access to global resources gave the big oil, tire and auto capitalists a means to make obscene profits by encouraging waste and excess. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Family legend has it my great-grandfather (a mechanic) refused a significant position with H. Ford because he plain didn't believe that mass production scheme could be applied to automobiles.
Some guys from the city came by over the weekend, and gave me 5 of the new buls in exchange for 5 of my incandescents. I like the new ones better. I wish that they would fit in the light fixtures that I use the most.
I don't see the problem. The government has banned things for safety reasons before, and it's pretty easy to see the emissions as a safety issue.
Have you tried full-spectrum bulbs, Don? I find that I don't look quite so much the depressive fat pasty ghost when I use those instead of just the regular fluorescent - at least no more than I look so in sunlight.
"True or False? The Ford Model "T" (fixin' to be 100 next year!) averaged 25 mpg."
Is it true? I know my '86 Honda CRX still gets over 40mpg on the freeway. What the hell happened to that technology?
What the hell happened to that technology?
That's the question I've asked. Not good enough emission control, or not enough power? I suspect the latter. I get sort of disgusted when I read about hybrid SUVs--I know all the arguments, but it just seems wrong, like having a diet coke with your two quadruple cheeseburgers and biggee fries.
-Roy
Some SUVs are useful. Depends on the owner. Probably a good three to five percent of them actually use their fuel-sucking off-road capabilities.
We're such a rich society, everything is driven not by need but by marketing.
We're such a rich society, I heard on NPR that drug sales for animals have more than doubled in the last five years.
Technology exists for extraordinarily high-mileage cars but they won't sell profitably until we can no longer get affordable petroleum from so many places, as we can today.
I've never tried the new bulbs, I just read or heard somewhere that fluorescent lights are unflattering and if installed in department stores will wreak havoc with swimsuit sales.
I will wear a swimsuit in candlelight only.
Don- I just saw this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070425/sc_nm/lightbulbs_env_dc
What's with these frickin' Al Gore wannabe lawyers who think they're frickin' engineers?
Yeah! And I wish our elected officials would consult better experts when they want to legislate a war, too! What's with this big government, anyway!
Oh.
Wait a minute.
Oops. They didn't actually legislate the war. My bad.
Wait a minute.
Then - how...
I am one of those who think compact fluorescent lights cast a sickly, greenish-yellow glow on everything. It's not that pronounced, but it's enough that I don't like it.
Not to be argumentative, but, seriously? 3-5% of SUVs are actually driven off-road? On purpose?
To be fair, around here in the winter, people with big, 4-wheel drive vehicles get around better when there is snow on the roadway. I'm guessing, but last winter I probably drove to and from work two times on snowy roads. I have front wheel drive, and got around OK, but I wasn't able to go as fast as the people with SUVs. So, there's that.
"...like having a diet coke with your two quadruple cheeseburgers and biggee fries."
Which reminds me of the Bacardi and diet coke ad which touts 0 carbs 0 calories. Wait a minute. It's alcohol! Tons of calories, metabolized much the same way as fat in physiological terms, and likely to deposit fat around your midsection, the worst place for it.
As for the utility of SUVs...in metropolitan CA, there is absolutley no excuse for those fucking things. They are a miserable fucking blight upon the earth and they should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. People who drive them often seem to be selfish and needlessly aggressive and just plain weird in their driving habits, which in a vehicle that big can be dangerous. I once heard an interview with a housewife from Marin County who said she loved her hummer because if she got into an accident she'd win. What the fuck? Even the radio traffic reporters now characterize accidents as one vehicle vs. another.
A while back on the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge there was a large steel plate in the road over a spot where the road bed was being prepared. So, there was a roughly one inch rise in the roadway causing a lip in the surface. SUV drivers were actually stopping their vehicles, during morning rush hour, and slowwwwwwwly creeping over the lip, then doing it again a car length later as they drove off. This caused amazing delays in traffic flow.
SUVs are the worst thing to happen to US roadways ever. They are dirty, wasteful and dangerous and you can't see around them.
I hope I haven't been too ambiguous here.
It's not the end of the world, Don. Have you read the text of the measure? They aren't outlawing black lights. Thank goodness!
Here's a guaranteed money making tip from me to you and all your blog readers, BUY STOCK IN COMPANIES THAT RECYCLE MERCURY! If we all switch from incandescents, the need for mercury for the fluorescents will soar as will the need to recapture the mercury when those fluorescents (eventually) burn out.
Mercury mining (check references to New Almaden ...) is a messy, polluting business. Companies involved in the recycle and sale of mercury will do a land office business.
That's probably good advice.
I've been using the new bulb in my living room, and like it much better. It's less harsh, a softer light, if you will.
"Some SUVs are useful."
Ours quite probably saved my little boy's life. I'd call that useful.
I'm going to be using up a lot of gasoline to get to the stores in Nevada to buy bulbs for my property in CA.
You'd drive a distance for incandescents? Do you really think they're that much better? I don't.
I have a quick little dance I run through my head when I'm trying to decide whether it's worth it to drive across town for something marginally cheaper over there ... or ... when the gasoline where I happen to be is $0.05 more per gallon than the gasoline at the cheap Shopn'Save in Campbell or some other "over there" place I'd have to drive a ways to.
If over there is 5mi away, RT = 10mi and if I'm getting 30MPG (mas o menos) that means I'll use up a third of a gallon getting the gas and if gas is $3.60/gal, a third of a gallon will be $1.20 which means I'd have to buy a lot more gas than my tank holds to offset the $0.05/gal savings.
So I don't. I grit my teeth and pay $3.65/gal.
If, however, the $0.05/gal cheaper gas is a mile away, well, I'm only using two miles worth which is a fifteenth of a gallon which would be $0.25 worth of gas, so if I need more than five gallons, it'd be worth it.
My head hurts.
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