Posted on 10/04/2010 7:23:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Arriving late one night into Tokyo, I checked into my hotel room to discover the world’s most complicated toilet.
There were hoses and nozzles where hoses and nozzles probably shouldn’t be, and along the side there was an alarming set of button and switches, which made the entire contraption look like a neat freak’s electric chair.
But, you know, when in Rome, right?
It’s difficult to convey, in a magazine dedicated to the higher pursuits of political philosophy and national renewal, just how fantastic the Japanese toilet was. It’s impossible, especially, within the civilized parameters set by the editors and their assistants, to describe what a revelation it was — after a few eye-popping mishaps with the electric controls and one of the smaller nozzles — to discover that there were still things to perfect about an act we’ve all come to take for granted, still improvements to be made on the entire system, and that the Japanese had done it.
On the other hand, it uses an awful lot of water, at least the way I adjusted the settings. In addition to the water in the toilet itself, there’s the additional water for all of those clever nozzles — you can set the pressure for each of them, but I learned the hard way that it’s best not to be a hero.
By the end of my trip to Japan, I had already located an American dealer. It’s an expensive unit, but I like to think I’m worth it. Also, it took me the entire week to make it through the user’s manual, and once I’ve put in that kind of time on a gadget, I like to get my money’s worth.
So, my beloved Japanese toilet now finds itself ensconced in my bathroom — look, this is going to get personal, okay? — near my shower, which sports a sunflower-sized showerhead, which rains buckets and buckets of soothing water onto the bather, the entire room lit by hot-burning incandescent bulbs with 100 watts apiece of wake-up brightness.
My bathroom, in other words — which to me represents the pinnacle of easy livin’, the perfect intersection of raw technological innovation and empathetic human understanding — is an environmentalist’s nightmare. My dazzling and profuse showerhead, which turns a morning ritual into a moment of Zen, and my complex, computer-chipped, nozzled toilet, and the bright bulbs that give it all a clarity and visual snap — all of them are in the crosshairs of the eco-police. All of them are doomed.
The light bulbs are the first to go. The last major incandescent-light-bulb factory in America, in Winchester, Va., is closing. When you remember that light bulbs are also the symbol of great ideas, sudden inspiration, entrepreneurial Aha! moments, the fact that the country of Thomas Edison no longer produces light bulbs is a sad metaphor. Maybe we no longer produce light-bulb moments, either. A compact-fluorescent bulb flickering to life above the head of a cartoon character doesn’t feel the same.
By 2014, according to an absurd and indefensible act of Congress — and this one passed in 2007, so it’s not Obama’s fault for once — the kind of light bulbs that we all prefer — you know, the bright ones, the ones that actually illuminate rooms and objects — will be essentially banned and replaced by those awful Dairy Queen–looking things, the compact-fluorescent bulbs that bathe the world in a gauzy, dirty, yellow haze. It’s sick-room lighting, state-mental-hospital illumination — the kind of lights they used in East Germany to keep everyone sad and downcast.
The compact fluorescents are harder to manufacture — something about all of those twisty tubes — and if something is hard to make, it ends up getting made in China, which is where all of our light bulbs will come from by 2014.
And that’s how the Chinese will win, of course. We’ll all be squinting into the sick gray light while they sneak in and take everything.
The only time I ever really lost my temper in a business setting — and there’s no point in working in Hollywood if you don’t throw a huge tantrum every now and then; exploders and fit-pitchers are not only tolerated out here, they’re positively celebrated — was when the studio decided to install those awful light bulbs in some kind of ludicrous “green” initiative.
Working late became impossible — you couldn’t actually see the script you were supposed to be rewriting. The minute the sun went down, it was as if we were working in an emergency zone, with flickering generator lamps lighting our job site.
I sent a polite memo to the studio facilities crew asking for the incandescents to be reinstalled. They sent a polite memo in reply denying that request — “The studio is committed to creating a green workplace” — and suggested that I just needed to let my “eyes adjust.”
I’d like to say that I handled this in a firm and civilized way, but I didn’t. I went nuts. I marched over to the studio president’s office and demanded that he spend the next evening in my office in the cold yellow haze and try to read a script printed in a twelve-point font. I yelled and threatened and shouted and screamed, which people do in Hollywood all the time for more money or a bigger trailer or a helicopter taxi, but rarely for better light bulbs.
In the end, they gave me back my light. But I knew the days of the incandescent were numbered. Workplaces all over America are going to get darker and even more depressing.
And now they’re coming into my bathroom.
The Department of Energy regulates showerheads. Some of them, apparently, are too wasteful. My sunflower-sized rainmaker is on the list to be banned, as are the kinds that squirt water in all directions (those seem nice) and the kind that emit a steamy fog. In other words, if it somehow leavens the act of bathing, raising it up from dull routine to a tiny glimpse of the spa lifestyle, well, the DoE is against it.
Manufacturers of such showerheads are being fined — this spring, the federal government fined four such companies a total of about $150,000, just for making a showerhead that people want — and stern warnings are being sent out on Department of Energy letterhead.
To an environmental bureaucrat, the world looks better when it’s dingier. Bright lights are too festive. Powerful showerheads are too luxurious. To maintain the proper downcast attitude, they want to make sure we’re all a little less comfortable.
It’s all about less with them. As far as the environmental movement is concerned, we’re running out of everything — polar icecaps, sea turtles, crude oil — and the trick is to cut our appetites down to size, to stop wanting to stand under a gushing showerhead in a bright morning bathroom and think, I can handle what’s coming at me today.
It’s not about showerheads and wattage. It’s about optimism. Either you think a more prosperous world is a good thing — that prosperity and ingenuity can solve most of our pressing problems — or you don’t. Either you think that being able to afford an expensive showerhead is a component of a complicated web of incentives designed to inspire the next Thomas Edison to invent something useful — like, say, a battery-powered car or a brighter energy-saving light bulb — or you think that we’re done, we’ve invented everything already and we need to divvy up a shrinking pie. For the Left, there are no light-bulb moments in the future.
In the Battle of the Bathroom, the environmental bureaucrats have the optimistic hedonists on the run. They’ve taken our bulbs and our rain-showers, so it’s just a matter of time before they focus their regulatory powers on my toilet, with its delightfully surprising — but water-wasteful — nozzles and jets. This, perhaps, is where we need to take our (seated) stand. This is the line they must not cross. When they come to me with their regulations and federal guidelines, I will take a page from the National Rifle Association and say, “From my cold, dead . . .”
Well, you get the idea.
— Rob Long is a contributing editor of National Review and a contributor to Ricochet.
My home is a combination of Fluoroscent and Incandescent lighting (I’d say 75% incandescent and 25% Fluorescent).
I don’t intend to leave this place for the next 7 to 8 years and 2014 will be upon us soon.
Has anybody done and estimation on HOW MUCH IT WILL COST to the average family to replace ALL Incandescent lighting with CFL lighting ?
Also, how are the Feds going to ensure total compliance? Are they going to hire people who will go from house to house and then start fining those who don’t comply ?
What if you are on a budget and don’t have the money to rewire your house ?
HAS ANYBODY ACTUALLY EVEN ASKED THESE QUESTIONS ?
Do you realize that most of you are going to be considered law breakers in 4 years?
This stupid law was passed in 2007 ( Bush was president then ).... HOW COULD HE EVEN SIGN THIS INTO LAW ?
RE: Be patient. LEDs are on the way.
Putting LEDs aside, I have a more practical question regarding how the ban-the-incandescent law is going to affect my pocket come 2014.
My home is a combination of Fluoroscent and Incandescent lighting (I’d say 75% incandescent and 25% Fluorescent).
I don’t intend to leave this place for the next 7 to 8 years and 2014 will be upon us soon.
Has anybody done and estimation on HOW MUCH IT WILL COST to the average family to replace ALL Incandescent lighting with CFL lighting ?
Also, how are the Feds going to ensure total compliance? Are they going to hire people who will go from house to house and then start fining those who don’t comply ?
What if you are on a budget and don’t have the money to rewire your house ?
HAS ANYBODY ACTUALLY EVEN ASKED THESE QUESTIONS ?
Do you realize that most of you are going to be considered law breakers in 4 years?
This stupid law was passed in 2007 ( Bush was president then ).... HOW COULD HE EVEN SIGN THIS INTO LAW ?
BTW, I take exception to this sentence in the above article :
“By 2014, according to an absurd and indefensible act of Congress — and this one passed in 2007, so it’s not Obama’s fault for once “
Why do we always heap praise or blame on a President ALONE when some law gets passed or rejected?
Obama was Senator in 2007. HOW DID HE VOTE ON THIS ISSUE?
If he voted YEA, then he CANNOT ESCAPE BLAME.
Of course, the more important question is this — WHY DID BUSH NOT VETO THIS STUPID AND IDIOTIC BILL WHICH WILL WILL ALL BUT GUARANTEE THAT THE FEDS WILL INTRUDE IN OUR LIVES?
Well, he signed ethanol subsidy bills too. There’s also the Patriot Act, which is a bit unConstitutional in some sections.
We’d have to go back 80 - 100 years to get back to where most FReepers would consider an acceptable Constitutional Republic.
They will have just shut them off at the supply side. Eventually all the incandescents will have burned out, and the oceans will lower, the Whales will sing gloriously, and Ubumbu the Magnificent (PBUH) will ascend to Heaven. There will be rainbows and unicorns, the Dodo will return, etc.
>This stupid law was passed in 2007 ( Bush was president then ).... HOW COULD HE EVEN SIGN THIS INTO LAW ?<
Did the Democrat majority of that period send him a bill that was packed with so much stuff it slipped by, or did he know he was signing this into law? If the latter is the case, surely he didn’t think this through and didn’t know how much mercury the bulbs contain.
You'll need an inspection and a permit in order to sell a house. Yes, they WILL "hire" people to inspect your house, but, not only will you pay to bring it up to "code", you'll pay for the inspection and re-inspection in order to be able to sell it.
“Has anybody done and estimation on HOW MUCH IT WILL COST to the average family to replace ALL Incandescent lighting with CFL lighting ?”
Right now I can go to any number of “dollar” stores in the big city and buy CFLs for $1 apiece. Count how many incandescents you have to replace and that is how dollars you will spend. In two years I have yet to lose one CFL.
If you sell a home in MA to a family with kids, you have to provide an certificate affidavit stating there is no lead paint in the house. Think it’s already in force or pending.
For older homes, potentially an issue.
Yep, KS as well on the “lead paint disclosure”.
The costs could become rather prohibitive in some cases.
Old houses, architectural flourishes layered in paint coats over decades......plastic seals when the removal process takes place.....workers in hazmat gear......Wow!
At least no one’s talking about the glue behind old wallpape!
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