Ban the Bulb? — “If all 4 billion incandescent sockets were filled with CFLs we’d have nearly 50,000 pounds of mercury spread around every single US household”

Information Liberation | Apr 8, 2007

In a few weeks the US Congress is likely to vote to phase out the standard incandescent lightbulb within a decade. The frantic race to see who can best appease the global warming alarmists will claim another victim, the friendly glow of the direct descendant of Thomas Edison’s filament-based light bulb.

Why would the humble lightbulb, a staple commodity that has raised the standard of living throughout the world, be in the bullseye? It was the incandescent electric light bulb that abolished the tyranny of the night. Our 19th and 20th century ancestors believed it one of the greatest gifts of civilization because they had directly experienced life before electric lighting changed everything. In 2002, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld briefly reminded us of this blessing when he commented on the satellite imagery revealing the nighttime darkness in North Korea, but other than this brief moment, we seem to have forgotten what we owe to Edison’s first invention.

Ironically, the lowly lightbulb became one of the icons of the New Deal, forever connected with the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. The REA and the TVA enabled cheap electric power to be available everywhere, even on the remotest farms and ranches. And a substantial part of the American people fell in love with big government because it brought this fruit of civilization, the rollback of the night, to all Americans.

But today, more than anything else, the humble lightbulb is altogether another sort of convenient symbol for big government-a technology dinosaur, perpetrator of evil crimes against the planet. Stopping the wasteful use of kilowatts by American households in the war on greenhouse gases is the new battle cry of the lovers of governmental control over our lives.

There are about 4 billion conventional screw-in light bulb sockets all across America; the vast majority are in homes and apartments. Incandescent light bulbs are in most of these sockets, with some 2 billion or more replaced every year. It is estimated at least $15 billion of electricity is consumed by these inefficient anachronisms, and that by replacing them with more energy efficient types of lightbulbs-primarily post-modern compact fluorescents–that $15 billion could be cut in half.

We are told that as kilowatts could be reduced, we would need fewer nasty coal-fired power generating plants, while winning a major battle against global warming with little pain and even less effort. Everybody wins!

Well, not exactly. Once again, a nice-sounding theory overlooks significant details of the practical outcomes.

Energy conservation lobbyists conveniently overlook the obvious fact that household lightbulbs are primarily used at night-exactly opposite the time of day in which utilities experience peak load demands for daytime heating, air conditioning and commercial lighting. Peak load shedding is what is most necessary for taking coal fired power plants out of commission.

Reducing nighttime lightbulb consumption of kwhs will do almost nothing to shave peak demand. Moreover, with non-peak kwhs reduced at night, utilities will now have fewer revenues on which to earn a return on their invested capital. Utilities must build up their physical plant to meet the peaks, and the capital to finance that equipment has to be paid for 24 hours a day. Thus, utilities will have to raise rates on the remainder of the kwhs we use for everything else, from washing machines to hair dryers to computers.

Household power used by lightbulbs is actually dwarfed these days by major appliances and high tech consumer electronics- such as wide screen TVs, computers and video games along with internet servers, the biggest energy hogs besides cars and trucks.

And since the new CFLs produce inferior light compared to incandescents, we’ll need more of them to read, shave, comb our hair and brush our teeth. Assuming literacy and personal hygiene are still hallmarks of civilized life after the global warming alarmists are done with their crusade to rid us of the blessings of the evil civilization that rapes Mother Gaia.

By banning the incandescent lightbulb Congress will forcibly remove a staple commodity from the marketplace, replacing it with products that are far more expensive, less reliable and more hazardous, notably the much ballyhooed compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL).

CFL lightbulbs have been around for well over a decade. Only recently have they come in enough varieties and flavors to capture about 10% of the available sockets. But they are still at least 5 times more expensive than regular incandescents, which if replaced in their entirety would cost consumers an extra $4 to 5 billion at the cash register. No doubt millions of Americans will enthusiastically embrace this new technology and be willing to pay extra to get it.

But millions more will not fare so well. This ban will be a tax on poor people and the silent majority-retirees on fixed incomes, single working parents, low wage earners working double shifts or two jobs along with the average Joes and Marys who live each week paycheck-to-paycheck. They don’t have cable TV to watch the Home and Garden channel, and can’t afford to replace their functional if drab table lamp fixtures, much less employ a green ideology-toting residential lighting designer.