This is a joke (the title) that works rather well, while being a serious issue as well. It’s all about trying to reduce our energy waste here in California, and contribute to the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The idea is to change from the garden variety incandescent bulbs (see left) to the compact fluorescent ones (see right). It’s striking that more people don’t already use them. Ordinary bulbs (apparently 2 billion of them sold every year in the USA) convert only about 5 percent of the energy that they consume into light. The rest is just wasted heat.
For the same amount of light output, compact fluorescents use much less energy: A 25 Watt compact fluorescent gives about the same amount of light as a 75 Watt incandescent… and it lasts over 10 times longer. The technology has improved quite a bit too, so there’s none of that flickering, funny spectrum of colours, etc, that some of us remember from fluorescent lights when we were younger. It is a real alternative that is not being used. Old habits are hard to break.
California assemblyman Lloyd Levine is trying to introduce legislation (under the above name!) to phase out the use of the incandescent bulb in California (except in some special cases) by 2012. *Read more here, for example.) This is the same fellow who last year introduced legislation to get supermarkets to recycle plastic bags. This is clearly a guy who recognizes the value of taking a small thing and multiplying it by millions – or billions – to make a significant difference. I don’t know if this will work, but this is really good stuff to do indeed. I wish him (and us all) the best of luck.
-cvj
Some Related Asymptotia Posts (not exhaustive):
If you reread my last post, I wasn’t suggesting that the situation in Edinburgh was identical to California, or that the same legislation would be introduced here.
Re info. There is much more if you google “flourescent lights autism” or “fluorescent lights meniere’s” or variations on that theme.
As I said before, I think it’s irresponsible to introduce legislation before the kinks have been ironed out. There are lots of ways of being more environmentally friendly, but I think this measure is misguided. I would be happy to see initiatives to develop LEDs, and I would be happy to see research into CFLs, or initiatives to encourage people to buy CFLs. But banning the sale of incandescents, when a lot of people report negative effects from them, is irresponsible and discriminatory.
On a slight tangent…
I know you mean well, but I hope you can see that those of us who are affected by this on a day to day basis can’t afford to be so confident. This is for the same reasons as I can’t afford to regard sexism or racism with an attitude to the effect of “Oh, things will get sorted out. Anyway, if discrimination happens, there are legal recourses.” Because that’s sort of…beside the point. Whether we have legal recourses is not the immediate point — discrimination shouldn’t be happening (and in some cases, it’s legal, eg it’s completely legal in many states to discriminate against mothers in employment, so we don’t always have the legal recourses that we should.). And when it’s something that profoundly affects your life, we can’t always relax and assume it will be sorted out, because change only comes about when people kick up a fuss. That’s why I have blogged about things people can actually do about sexism, for example. You’ve also blogged about minorities in science, and you do stuff about minorities and involvement in culture and the public sphere etc. So may you can understand why it comes across as a little bit condescending and indifferent to be told that things will just sort themselves out (I know that you didn’t mean it that way, but that’s how it can come across).
That’s off topic (and is more general than the lightbulb issue), but I hope you understand the point I’m making.
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Cheers,
IP
Nowhere in what I said in the above did I claim that things would just “sort themselves out”. You invented that. What I said to you was that things can be improved by people with legitimate objections and clarifications coming forward as part of the standard process and helping to make the legislation better. This is where the “kinks are ironed out”, to use your phrase – through debates and amendments, before it is adopted. So it is not irresponsible or discriminatory to bring the proposal forward, it is actually the process we all participate in as part of our democracy. I suggested this as an alternative to the far from constructive approach you seemed to be suggesting, which was to simply come in and declare it bad or unworkable legislation at the outset and begin calling people “indifferent”, and now “condescending”.
In these matters, whether it is lightbulbs, minorities, women, or whatever, it’s very easy to sit at the sidelines and cry foul, and to accuse people of making mistakes when they are at least trying out ideas. The real hard work comes in trying to help them make their ideas work, and not going for the knee-jerk response of labeling everything discrimination. In these ambiguous situations, where motives can easily be misjudged, I find that it is better that you give people the benefit of the doubt until you have clearer reasons to think otherwise. I suggest that you (please) try this approach. More good may be achieved in the long run.
-cvj
I still don’t think this legislation is workable, nor have you suggested any alterations that could make it work. At present, from what I have seen of the legislation in press releases (available at Levine’s webpage), it is discriminiatory because it would ban the sale of incandescents, which at present are the only easily available lightbulbs that don’t sem to cause problems for people.
I do think there are other better proposals that could be made that would lead to the same sort of end (eg, LEDs as we’ve mentioned, or encouraging peopel to use CFLsin their homes if they’re able to). But I think replacing incandescents with CFLs without it first being clear that new CFLs don’t cause these problems (or developing ones that don’t) is irresponsible. At the moment, that is far from obvious, and that’s why I think this is bad legislation.
I will be happy to be proved wrong in this. I would love to see a way in which this legislation could be made workable.
What part of this am I getting wrong? Thinking this piece of legislation is unworkable is also part of the standard process. People are allowed to object to legislation without being told they are sitting on the sidelines and crying foul. I did look up information on this legislation and have thought about it, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s bad legislation. If thinking that sometimes some ideas can be mistaken makes me a knee-jerk egalitarian, fine.
I said it would be discriminatory for this legislation to be in force, not for it to be debated.
I’m going to withdraw from this thread since we seem to be talking cross-purposes, and that isn’t getting anywhere in term of the original topic. I’d be happy to discuss further by email if you’d like. The last part of my last post wasn’t about this debate although you seem to have interpreted it that way. I’m sorry to have pissed you off.
Cheers,
IP
So environmentalists are forcing us to use something that ends up hazardous waste?! (Not to mention fluorescents cost more to manufacture-energy and resources wise-not to mention the unkown cost,including environmental, of disposing of them.) Keep in mind that the glass and metal in the proven and innocuous incandescents can be reused or safely thrown away. One of the reasons for mercury pollution in this country already is businesses and factories and schools throwing away all those cheap flickering monstrosities people already spend so much time under. This is in addition to the potential danger to humans in handling them-how many light bulbs have you broken in a life time?
Something you may not know, natural incandescent lights can made to out last fluorescents. Why not legislate for that if you must. If you actually do care about the environment, not to mention human well being, ban fluorescent lights! I’m starting to think this really is just about controlling the individual.