Beginning in 2014, The United States Congress will enact new energy efficiency standards that will mandate the use of CFLs -- those spirally fluorescent bulbs. This will make the incandescent light bulb (i.e. the type of bulbs you use now) obsolete.
The government has made this decision because the CFLs use about 25 percent of the energy and last 10 times longer than the bulb Edison first invented over a hundred years ago. Sounds like a good idea, right? Wrong. Besides the fact that they emit a harsh glow that makes everyone look like that ugly girl you’ve been talking to until last call when the lights come on, they are actually bad for the environment.
They all contain a small amount of mercury that, unless recycled properly, will leak into landfills and leach into our water supply. Proponents will claim that when you consider the extra production of energy needed because of the inefficiency of regular bulbs, the total toxic mercury footprint is negligible. This is a dumb argument. Why are we allowing our government to dictate what kind of light we can use when it doesn’t ultimately solve the problem – and in fact, may make it worse?
Similar dumb logic comes to mind in a story dating back to Hawaii in 1883. Rats from merchant ships had infested the islands and had no natural predators to keep them in check. A decision was made to import 72 mongooses from Jamaica, believing that they would restore a natural balance to the food chain.
Guess what happened next. Hawaii hosts no natural predators for mongooses either and they began to take over the island. Ironically, rats are nocturnal and mainly active at night, while mongooses prefer to hunt during the day. The rat population continues to thrive and their supposed predators infest the island and carry just as many communicable diseases.
Importing bad solutions to fix other bad problems is not the business that government should be in. A more reasonable solution might include large government prizes to the company that invents a new, clean, and energy efficient light source. Another fix could include tax breaks to private firms that supply renewable energy. Some conservative economists, including The Prometheus Institute (a Libertarian think tank) even believe that a carbon tax, if offset by comprehensive across-the-board tax reductions, would be the ideal way to attack the problem at the root. This proposal essentially builds the externalized (or social) cost of fossil fuels into the equation through a revenue neutral tax. This would be much preferred over an inflexible and bureaucratic cap-and-trade program or things like government mandated light bulbs.
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When I stayed at the Ritz at Kapulua Bay, there were neither rats nor mongoose.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the mercury from the CFL's killed them. Which of course would be a nice ancillary benefit of GE utilizing the protests of the tree huggers; to manipulate government policy; to generate profits; and to save Hawaii from the rats and mongoose.
The Invisible Hand works!