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US To Extinguish (Most) Incandescent Bulb Sales By 2012
Engadget has noted a report in the New York Times that that the US has "passed a law barring stores from selling incandescent light bulbs after 2012. 'Course, the EU and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient devices in the not-too-distant future, but a new energy bill signed into law this week throws the US into the aforementioned group. Better grab a pack of the current bulbs while you still can — soon you'll be holding a sliver of history."
There's more important things here than money. Less energy used is still less energy used.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
You're assuming that Joe Sixpack can understand the concept of "savings over time". All he sees is that he can buy a 4-pack of incandescents for the same price as one CFL. As far as he's concerned that makes the CFL more expensive RIGHT THEN, and that's all he cares about.
Of COURSE CFLs are more efficient over time (both in terms of energy consumption and replacement cost). This isn't controversial at all, it's a plain fact. (Granted, the cost of disposal eats into those savings, but you're still ahead of the game in the long run.) It's also irrelevant to most people when they make a purchase. Without the force of a ban, those people will still continue to buy the cheaper incandescents.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
That would be a valid argument if we had a free market economy. We don't. In a true free market, people would weigh the costs and benefits of each purchase both to themselves and to the society in general. Free markets require educated, thoughtful consumers. We don't have those. We have people who shop at Wal*Mart and think it's great that pickles only cost $3 instead of $3.50.
If you don't like the laws being passed, write your congressman. Until then, they're doing the job we elected them to do. If the majority of voters don't like what an elected official does, they get voted out of office. If the majority of voters find these kinds of laws inappropriate or objectionable, they'll remove them from office.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
It seems to me that the non-"educated, thoughtful consumers" in our free market have a different value system than you do. You look at that jar of Wal*Mart pickles and see lost jobs, so you buy the local jar instead for more money. The rest of the consumers act exactly as economics predicts -- they look at the price ($3 is less than $3.50), they look at the elasticity of the product (a pickle is a pickle, whether it's from China, Mexico, or California), and they act. In this case, economics dictates that people will tend to buy the $3 Wal*Mart pickle because it's the lowest price for a highly elastic good.
I would argue that this is where our lack of "educated, thougthful" citizens actually matters. The same people who are capable of operating optimally in a free market (because the free market was designed around true, rational human behavior) fall apart when dealing with politics (because politics revolves around idealized concepts of human nature that aren't in the least bit true). This is why you can have people voting in xenophobic candidates (stop illegal immigration, stop out-sourcing of jobs overseas, etc) who then turn right around and buy imported goods from the likes of Wal*Mart. Which is the correct behavior? Neither, because "correct" is not the right word. The "natural" behavior is the latter, because price will always be the biggest factor in any economics, to the point where most everything else just factors out. The former is a mix of gullibility and wishful thinking.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)
Oh, BS. I bought a sunlamp for my wife and was immediately struck by the cold, ugly light coming out of it. And then one day I was walking into the room where we'd put it and was noticing how awful it looked - until I realized that the light was turned off and it was sunlight streaming in. Yeah, that "ugly, artificial" light was identical to natural sunlight. It just looked odd because it was a fluorescent lamp and I expected it to look odd. That "warm, yellow" color? In blackbody terms, that's really a "cold, yellow color" when compared to sunlight. You think it looks warm because we associate "red" with "hot", but that's just not relevant here.
My buddy in the local Fire Dept. hazmat squad told me that my house should have been evacuated and a hazmat clean-up crew sent in after I dropped a CF bulb and broke it inside the house...Pick smarter friends. The current crop seem to be idiots.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?