Posted on 09/08/2010 1:40:25 PM PDT by freespirited
WINCHESTER, VA. - The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.
The remaining 200 workers at the plant here will lose their jobs.
"Now what're we going to do?" said Toby Savolainen, 49, who like many others worked for decades at the factory, making bulbs now deemed wasteful.
During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas.
What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.
The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.
Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs”.
...not my American household. I’ll be stocking up and you can be sure that regular bulbs will be sold somewhere. There is no way I’ll be forced into using those twisty little idiotic, headache causing bulbs of pain.
And forcing others to buy extra storage bins for all the ones we've stockpiled.
Another Bush gift indeed. Republicans banned DDT, Freon, Nuclear power and light bulbs in hope the leftards will like them. Learn the lesson yet????
No, he doesn't. Who dropped the Kyoto treaty? Who fought the EPA tooth and nail (all the way to the Supreme Court) to keep them from treating CO2 as a pollutant?
Please show me one quote from GWB that in anyway supports man made global warming.
Snip: Also new research has come to light that indicates that CFLs emit a high humming sound that is not in our range of hearing but is in the range of hearing of cats and dogs. Can you image hearing a high pitched humming sound all day long. It would be enough to drive you nuts! Many pet owners report that their cats or dogs do not want to be in rooms with CFL bulbs on and will become anxious if they are forced to be.
And a lot of people either don’t realize or won’t admit that the “you can buy a house if you’re breathing” period started in 2005 when W and the repubs held the power.
I have a couple of the older American made CFLs that I like just fine. The ones coming from China are pure crap and half the time they don’t even work right out of the package.
The LED lights are nice but damn expensive.
Stock up on the 100 watt beauties.
....eventually Congress will pass another law because of the mercury in CFL’s that you’ll have to pay to dispose of them...properly,by law,(taxed).
We The People must DEMAND the light bulb Gestapo in DC be stopped! The new Republican majority in the House and Senate must repeal this insanity.
We must DEMAND that the Republicans get Big Brother out of our light bulbs, out of our health care, out of what cars we buy, out of our plastic bags, and out of our lives and out of our businesses.
Bush railed against what was going on in congress re: fanny and freddie....he just did not continue after a short while and signed the bills necessary to get what he wanted in trade....the real enemies in this was buttwipes like Bawney Fwank and Chuckie ‘putzhead’ Schumer....but Bush was not innocent by any stretch.
And yet, I will bet we never hear the phrase "shipped jobs overseas" in relation to this. Even though "shipping jobs overseas" precisely applies better to this act by Congress than to any corporate layoff.
Pelosi / Reed can own this one.
Just checked my stash of GE Incandescents. They were "Made in China" by "GE Lighting(China)Co. LTD."
Looks like the CFL's may have had nothing to do with the plant shutting down.
Because like the chinese the stuff only has to be 80% of the original.
Stock Tip: Stock up on storage bins for stockpiling.
“Now what’re we going to do?”
Vote Republican
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