That's right! Let's all change our incandescent light bulbs to these expensive, unreliable, impossible to recycle, made in Third World slave camps, mega manufacturing-packaging-transportation footprint, mercury-gas-loaded kind... Let's trust the manufacturers on this one. Better to be safe than sorry, right? (Yet another victory for the precautionary principle.)
In addition, there is that wonderful psychological side benefit that you have empowered ordinary citizens by training them to participate in solving problems via add-campaign-induced consumer choices. (And they can spend the projected electricity savings on credit now.) Luckily for the planet, it's easy to market green responsibility.
1 comment:
For me, the big problem with these bulbs is both personal safety (the vapors when they break) - but also the "savings" are almost guarenteed to be half what's advertised. This is for the simple reason that so long as your furnace is on, you aren't saving any money by turning lights off - every electrical device is a 100% efficient heater categorically (all energy consumed turns to heat - or actually is heat in the case of light, light is just a heat wave at a very particular frequency). So, it's only when you weren't heating your house anyway that using "less power" in your lightbulbs will be a reduction in energy consumption.
Weirdly, this goes for "energy efficient" appliances as well - there is no need to have an energy efficient fridge or freezer in the winter, they are just heating your house. Except, maybe, if they are in the basement against a cold wall, that heat isn't really doing any good. But in a kitchen, on a main floor, the net energy cost of operating a refrigerator has got to be negligible.
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