Courtesy Gromet
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Posted on 05/05/2013 4:57:10 AM PDT by raybbr
Back in 2011, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) declared war on energy-efficient light bulbs, calling "sustainability" the gateway into a dystopic, Big Brother-patrolled liberal hellscape. When the lights went off during Beyoncé’s halftime set at the last Superbowl, conservative commentators from the Drudge Report to Michelle Malkin pointed blame (erroneously) at new power-saving measures at New Orleans’ Superdome. And one recent study found that giving Republican households feedback on their power use actually encourages them to use more energy.
Why do conservatives, who should have a natural inclination toward conservation, have a beef with energy efficiency? It could be tied to the political polarization of the climate change debate.
A study out in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined attitudes about energy efficiency in liberals and conservatives, and found that promoting energy-efficient products and services on the basis of their environmental benefits actually turned conservatives off from picking them. The researchers first quizzed participants on how much they value various benefits of energy efficiency, including reducing carbon emissions, reducing foreign oil dependence, and reducing how much consumers pay for energy; cutting emissions appealed to conservatives the least.
The study then presented participants with a real-world choice: With a fixed amount of money in their wallet, respondents had to "buy" either an old-school light bulb or an efficient compact florescent bulb, the same kind Bachmann railed against. Both bulbs were labeled with basic hard data on their energy use, but without a translation of that into climate pros and cons. When the bulbs cost the same, and even when the CFL cost more, conservatives and liberals were equally likely to buy the efficient bulb. But slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says "Protect the Environment," and "we saw a significant drop-off in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option," said study author Dena Gromet, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
The chart below, from the report, shows how much liberals and conservatives value each argument for efficiency: While liberals (gray) valued all three equally, conservatives (white), were significantly less moved by and most at odds with liberals over the carbon-saving argument.
Courtesy Gromet
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A. Those that don't follow these issues often think of cars and low power engines. They assume that means low power equipment.
B. A lot of conservatives think that buying these products are a donation to the democrats.
C. I wouldn't buy those lightbulbs for anything if I can help. Breaking one is REAL bad news.
As far as caring about the environment, I grew up in the woods of North Michigan. The last thing I want to do is poison our river, destroy all our trees, and eliminate all our animals there. I'm concerned with REAL problems however instead of global warming.
I decided years ago that the word ‘green’ equals traveling-salesman bullsh!t. It means I’m supposed to spend more money for less product and get a sense of self-satisfaction for volunteering to be robbed.
‘Green’ marketing has the opposite effect on me than it is probably supposed to have. I automatically lose respect for any manufacturer that uses this tactic. I think to myself, ‘OK, this company thinks I’m stupid enough to believe this garbage.’ The company might as well have put a sticker on the package saying, “We’ve decided to charge you more money for a smaller container of re-formulated junk that doesn’t even work as well as the stuff we used to make. Don’t you love the Earth? You want to be a good person, right? Well pay up, sucker!”
You want me to pay more for an “Energy Efficient” product?
Then make it work better than the non-energy efficient version.
And by making them SAFE. Having a mercury-filled CFL break by your toddlers kinda obviates any supposed benefits.
Take Lo-Flo toilets, where one flush used to be all that was needed it now takes three or four.....You have to flush before you go to make sure the schmuck before you didn’t put too much toilet paper in. Then if you need to use a lot of toilet paper to clean up, you’d better break it up into two or three flushes.
The smart car!
The first time I saw one, I just started laughing!
The natural tendency of a consumer is to get the best for the cheapest price. Karma, Natural Order, whatever, often comes to a head, and the “best for the cheapest” can become “NOT the best and cheapest”.
This is where the capitalist drive comes into play. The ‘engine’ responds to demand in the quickest way possible. Meet the demand is the order of the day. Investment, research, and best result put up on the shelves.
Mother Earth, GREEN, “feelings” has nothing to do with it - they don't make a tinker's damn worth of difference. Their proponents most always aren't after any of that; they are after complete control of your life and what you do, say and think. If you want confirmation of that, spend a day really scoping out the web and looking at all the information about Al Gore, for instance.
Left alone, capitalism meets the demands of the market under most any clear-cut and reasonable circumstance. It is when GOVERNMENT and Ideology comes into play disaster almost always follows.
Besides, a lot of "energy efficient" are more damaging to the environment than non-energy efficient products.
See curly fry light bulbs (nod to Mark Steyn).
The real question is how do we get liberals to stop buying into every snakeoil salesman that says “green”?? We can’t: Liberals are just plain stupid.
“The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth in the fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals.”
- H.L. Mencken
Tim McDonnell is an associate producer at Climate Desk, a collaboration between Mother Jones, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Slate, Grist, Wired, PBS's Need to Know, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, that produces original multimedia journalism on climate change. Tim's reporting has covered renewable energy, extreme weather, marine conservation, and everything in between, often told through video or other visual media. Tim is a native of Tucson, Arizona, and now lives in New York City.
I have CFL bulbs in most of my light fixtures and I like them, I don’t have a problem with the light they give off, my only gripe, and it’s a minor one is that they take a while to “warm up” to full brightness but even that doesn’t take very long. I will, when they eventually need to be replaced, probably switch to LED bulbs. But FWIW, I’ve had the same CFL bulb in my living room lamp and it get’s turned on and off several times a day and it’s been going strong for well over two years now, coming up on three. In fact it’s on a timer, especially during the winter months when I don’t like walking into a dark apartment and for when I’m away and want to give the appearance that someone is home. I had several lamps with CFL bulbs on timers at my old house as well including the one on my front porch for security reasons and they all lasted several years, some I never replaced while I lived there, including the one I had in my basement that stayed on 24-7. But I don’t buy them to be “green”, I buy them because I like saving money and I hate changing light bulbs. : ), OTOH, I don’t think I or anyone else should be forced to buy them, I want to have choices as dictated by the free market, not by the government or what the green pissers tell me I must have : (
When I bought my last house, when I lived in MD before I lost my job, moved to PA and downsized to an apartment, I needed to replace the washer and dryer and soon the dishwasher (they were all the cheapest builder’s grade appliances that had a lot of wear and tear on them from the previous owner and I negotiated a credit for replacing them at closing) and after a lot of research, I bought the euro-style front loading washer and matching dryer, both very energy efficient and also in terms of water usage, a bit more expensive upfront, but what I really liked was how well it washed the clothes and didn’t wear them out (top loading machines with agitators wear out clothes much faster and tend to tear off buttons and have a tendency to pill clothes, especially sweaters) and because the front loaders spin so much faster, drying time was greatly reduced, another saving. I also liked that they were programmable and had many options for different size loads and clothing types, the dryer even had a cycle and removable rack for drying wool sweaters at a low temperature, much cheaper than dry cleaning. When I sold my house over three years ago, I sold my front loader washer and matching dryer to my niece, she has 6 kids at home and does a heck of a lot of laundry and other than one small minor repair, those machines are still running perfectly.
And the new high efficiency dishwasher I bought was awesome and not all that expensive; it had deep well for big pots and pans, a food grinder, a small load mode, and it was extremely quiet, well insulated and programmable so I could set it to run very late at night, after I went to bed when electricity is cheaper. And it did a great job, the dishes and even heavily dirty pots and pans came out sparkly clean. Again, I didn’t buy these new appliances because of the Energy Star rating alone, or because I wanted to “save the environment” or the Polar Bears or be “green”, I bought them, the best and most highly rated energy efficient machines and in terms of reliability and customer satisfaction that I could afford at the time at the very best price I could find – because I like saving money, even if I have to spend a little more upfront to save a lot more down the road. Penny wise but pound foolish is not a good way to live.
I also installed a programmable thermostat, one with multiple settings including a weekday and weekend mode. I noticed a drop of about $10 per month on my electric and gas bill after installing it, that’s about $120 per year in savings so it more than paid for its self in the first six months.
I drive a small Toyota, a two door hatchback, a 5 speed manual transmission, 4 cylinder gasoline engine that I bought used, two years old when I bought it but in like show room condition and with very low mileage for a great price probably because so few people know how to or want to drive a manual these days. In fact when I bought it, the salesman, the sales manager and the finance manager, all asked me if I was sure I knew it was a manual. LOL! I get about 38 MPG and I love it, very zippy little car with very low maintenance and insurance costs and with the fold down back seats, more than enough cargo space for me. I wouldn’t mind having an all wheel drive SUV again, I had one previously, a Subaru that I loved but the car I have now gets me around just fine and now that it’s paid off, I’ll be driving it until I wear it out, which might well be 10 years from now.
If I could afford to buy some property and build my custom “dream” house, if the upfront money was no object, I would certainly make it as energy efficient as possible and as reasonable; for instance, good and properly installed insulation, high quality thermal insulated windows, energy efficient appliances. I’d even consider installing a geo thermal heating system and perhaps a few solar panels to supplement a conventional but high efficiency furnace, a tankless water heater (those from what I understand work great at a big saving over conventional tank water heaters and last much longer), lots of ceiling fans, a good attic fan, etc. And I’d probably have a wood burning stove and or a wood burning fireplace too because I like them :), And again, I’d do that, invest in energy efficiency, not because I’m a “greenie” or a Gia worshipper, but because I’d want an energy efficient home because I like saving money, don’t want to pay for heating and air conditioning that either doesn’t work as well, is expensive to run or a house that leaks heating and cooling to the great outdoors where it’s not needed.
I don’t buy into the “green is better” meme and yes, some “green” products are rip offs, but there has been some great improvements in appliance technology in recent years. A good example is in newer refrigerators, the ones with the freezer drawer on the bottom - what a great idea! Not only more energy efficient, but also more convenient.
And as the new technology is tweaked and improved and becomes more popular, the costs will come down. Remember that when they first came out, a VCR cost nearly $1,000, a flat screen 30” TV set you back a cool grand or more as well. Now you can buy a much better and much bigger flat screen TV, a 40” HD LCD AND a “smart” internet capable, wifi enabled Blue Ray DVD player for half that amount (I did just that last year after my old hand me down 24” tube TV died and FWIW, I did notice a very slight drop in my electric bill after I got the new Energy Star rated TV).
I also remember when a PC or laptop was very expensive compared to what you can buy now and a cell phone? I remember when they were the size of a shoe box, you had about 15 minutes of battery life and the only thing you could do with them was make phone calls and that was if you were lucky and were in exactly the right spot and you had to install one of those ugly antennas on your car. I now have a “smart phone” that has a lot more computing power by many factors and has many more features than the first cell phone I had or the first PC I owned, and 8086 with a small but heavy and bulky monochrome monitor with no hard drive, just floppy disks, one to run the program and one to save documents on.
My point is that the free market will or should eventually weed out the bad and overhyped products and either force them out of existence or force them to make improvements and eventually reduce prices as they improve, if they are what consumers really want and need and they work well, and as a result become more popular. Energy efficiency and new technology is not our enemy, energy efficiency is not a bad thing overall. It’s rather bad government interference in the free market, government investment and support of bad technology and poorly run companies that are not offering what we consumers want that is the enemy.
Same op-ed, original title:
Why Do Conservatives Like to Waste Energy?
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/04/why-do-conservatives-waste-energy
The worst part is not only are the “new” lights expensive, almost all are imported.
BRING BACK AMERICAN JOBS.
My opinion: quit politicizing everything! If its cheaper and works just as well, I will take it. If its a good deal that let’s me keep more cash in my wallet, then I will take it! It’s simple economics really.
Speaking for myself; when I hear/see the word “green” used as anything but a definition of a color, I know that I will be paying twice as much for a product that doesn’t do the job half as well as what I am now using.
I would add to your comment that “conservation” is not the same as “enviromentalism”. The purchasing of “green” products, for the sake of their being “green” is “enviromentalism”.
I remember reading an article some years ago where the author was speaking to some European who was complaining about Americans and asked "why do Americans all drive those big cars?" The answer the author of the article gave was; "because Americans are still having children".
You are right, Lefties do not have kids, or very many of them. So, a small car does just fine. But, once you have a medium to large sized family, you need more room.
For 11¢/kWh it costs $1 per watt per year for electricity. So a 100 watt bulb running 6 hours a day costs $25 per year. Make the replacement cheap enough and I have no problem going to LED bulbs. CFLs were too slow to light and too flickery to actually live with.
I can boil that down even further.
Say two people offer to sell you tubes of the same toothpaste, at the same price, and you want to buy a tube of toothpaste.
One of them says “This is good toothpaste at a good price.”
The other says “This toothpaste is better than all other toothpaste, because it will also prevent baldness.”
The conservative inclination of the second pitch is that the pitchman is a goniff. A liar.
The same with salesmen of efficiency light bulbs. They don’t offer a better price or better, more pleasant lighting, or longer lasting bulbs, so they offer something unrelated. “They’re good for the planet!” Yeah, b.s.
I’m reminded of when the Soviet Union first build the Moscow subway. It was really gorgeous and expensive, and a top Soviet official couldn’t wait to drag the American ambassador there to show it off.
Indeed he was impressed, but then he noticed something odd. No subway trains. The truth was that they had spent so much money on the subway, they had none left to build trains with.
So he asked the Russian, “Where are the trains?”
To which he immediately and angrily applied, “But what about the abusive treatment of blacks in the American South!?!”
Yep, when cornered, leftists change the subject.
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