Posted on 07/15/2011 3:36:26 PM PDT by NRG1973
The House on Friday morning moved to block federal light bulb efficiency standards without even a roll call vote.
An amendment from Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) defunding the Energy Department's standards for traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30 percent more energy efficient starting next year was approved rather anticlimactically by voice vote.
The success of the amendment appeared inevitable in the House, where the fate of the incandescent light bulb became a symbol in the fight against federal regulations.
Democrats and the White House have opposed the move to block the standards, which were included in a 2007 energy bill signed by President George W. Bush. DOE has said the standards could save consumers $6 billion a year.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Not so sure on the illegal immigration protest. There’d be a counter protest at the same time which could turn bloody. Americans have to push the politicians to enforce the laws that are already on the books concerning people being in the US illegally. When Mexico protests US immigration laws tell them “sure, okay, we’ll use your laws on illegal immigration”.
Break one in the lobby of your city or town hall.
They make my tomato soup look green.
"I'm not a politician. I'm a problem solver."
"I don't believe it is the role of the Federal Government, or the government to tell consumers what they ought to buy, how they ought to buy it."
Herman Cain
I like him.
I trust him.
Emissions from burning whale oil are OK because whale oil (like biodiesel )is a natural substance. Its kinda like humans exhaling CO2...they don't seem to mind those emissions either.
You may like them and use them, but please be careful with the mercury.
EPA Disposal Instructions (on video as presented by Rep. Poe)
> You may like them and use them, but please be careful with the mercury.
Too late for me.
We used to play with mercury from broken thermometers when I was a kid. There were all sorts of nutty things you could do with it.
I probably have more mercury in my teeth than in all the cfl bulbs in my house.
:)
Me either. Every paycheck for the last 2 years I've been buying 100W and 60W full spectrum bulbs as they appear on sale. I have more than 100 of each, which should be a lifetime.
The new revolutionaries molitoff cocktail.
While I agree with you in general, there's the problem of The Tragedy of The Commons, not fully addressed by the Free Market. Or, perhaps, it's best stated as a problem of consumption exceeding production, or of limited supply. The Free Market doesn't account for all of the costs that usage of electricity imposes. There are third-party costs, so claiming that we should be able to buy whatever we want, spend our money however we want, is not as valud as it would be if we were buying pieces of art.
Secondly, because of inefficiency, every unit of energy saved represents a correspondingly large input of fossil fuel. (Note the somewhat interchangeable nature of the inputs...petroleum used to be a very large input to energy generation, but now is a fraction of a percent. That petroleum now goes to transportation.
Frankly, the conservative view would be to account for all of the third-party costs. It's the populist view to say that a person should be able to just buy whatever he wants and not account for other costs.
I'm not saying we should ban the bulbs. (As an aside, it's important to remember that they didn't ban them...they just instituted a performance standard.) I'm suggesting that in a larger picture, there are still some issues that are not being addressed either way.
Last year they were passing things we don’t like by voice vote. This year things we DO like.
I have had the exact opposite experience, but see, you have to know where to use them. I used them outdoors, because those tend to stay on for many hours. I tend not to use them in places like bathrooms, where there might be a lot of on-off cycling. I use them in most other places however. I hardly ever replace the CFL's either. For me, living where it is hot, I save twice, once on less energy to light the bulb, and then again when I pay less to remove the excess heat from the home. To me, though, its about choice, I am Pro-Choice on Light Bulbs.
I understand what you are saying, particularly with respect to inefficiency of electrical power generation. That is an area we could save huge amounts of energy, but I am not sure the technology is there yet to do things like replace high voltage transmission lines (where losses are staggering) or the like.
You said that the Free Market doesn’t account for all of the costs that usage of electricity imposes. There are third-party costs...just to make sure I understand the nature of what you reference (before I agree or disagree with that) could you provide a few examples?
But I do disagree with the characterization of my discussion as populist, which usually carries the stench of a shallow and emotional approach. I would say that my approach to the issue was much less shallow and populist (by far) than that of the politicians who passed this legislation. How is it populist to say a person should be able to buy what they want, particularly if performance is degraded and the alternative is cheaper? If the CFL lights were commercially viable, people would buy them, no questions asked.
This isn’t just a knee jerk, populist reaction. This is a case of government mandating what we should purchase. Just because they “banned” them by making a standard that it was impossible for them to meet, or banning them outright by fiat, the end result is the same.
I don’t see this as any different from the Colonial Americans being forced to purchase British tea.
And this is simply one example. Day by day, the government is closing its regulatory fist around all of us, doing it so slowly, incrementally and relentlessly that one day, the water in the pot will boil us in tyranny before we are aware and can jump out like the proverbial frog.
Many Americans think that day has already come. I don’t believe that.
Yet.
The last US factory that was making “real” bulbs closed recently, and I doubt it will reopen. The damage has been done.
This isn’t about saving energy (whatever that means - we use energy, we don’t save it), it’s about GE and Sylvania making more money by selling expensive bulbs. It’s a con.
Here in the PRM (People’s Republic of Massachusetts) I can no longer take a hot, hot shower without circumventing the law (building code) because they limit the temperature to 130 degrees.
Really.
Perhaps it is the same everywhere, but this burns my ass (in an emotional sense, not literally, which I might enjoy, but the water temperature is not allowed to get that high)
I used to depend on a steaming hot shower to loosen my back muscles...after getting my bathroom upgraded with the new temp limiters in place, the only way I can get around it is by circumventing the device, which requires technical know-how or an illegal plumber, both of which make lawbreakers of citizens.
That is just another example of nanny-statism.
He said it will have absolutely no effect on home refrigeration at all.
"They" (the folks he was working for at the time) computed in visits to the hospital related to consumption of tainted meat ~ which is not an inconsiderable cost.
I am all for irradiation of food. Completely. It is one hell of a lot cheaper and more effective than carting and storing stuff in fridges everywhere.
Yeah, I know about free radicals. I was a nuclear medicine tech for fifteen years...
We have people who put the risk from free radicals in food so far above the threat of food-borne illnesses because WE TAKE REFRIGERATION SO DAMNED FOR GRANTED!
Grr.
I have a great idea!!!!!
Oh wait the light bulb that went off above my head is a squiggly bulb can you wait for a little bit for it to come on . . . . . .
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