… when they pry them from my cold dead hands. And you can thank president Bush for signing this piece of garbage.
“In this bill, we ban by 2012 the famously inefficient 100-watt incandescent bulb,” said Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who co-sponsored that provision.
You can go fuck yourself Jane Harman. Seriously.
The bill requires a fivefold increase – to 36 billion gallons – in the amount of alternative home-grown fuels, such as ethanol, that must be added to the nation’s gasoline supply by 2022.
Good to see the corn farmers got their hands in this. Corn farmers can go fuck themselves too! [No offense intended to any corn farmers who read this, and aren’t actively participating in the conspiracy to force their product onto the American consumer]
Folks, our government is out of control, and pretty clearly George W. Bush and the Republicans aren’t going to do a thing about it. I have no problem with compact florescent bulbs, but if they didn’t have problems, they wouldn’t need government intervention to beat standard incandescents in the marketplace. The government has banned toilets that actually flush decently, and now light bulbs that are actually…. bright. Am I the only one who is tired of this bullshit?
UPDATE: Joe has more to say here.
UPDATE: Ride Fast & Shoot Straight too.
Water-saving toilets are the devil. Oh, and they don’t save water if you have to flush multiple times.
In Canada several years ago they mandated the water-saving toilets. Guess what? A black market developed for people who wanted normal toilets smuggled into Canada from the U.S.
If the government bans something and a sufficient demand still exists the black market will immediately fill that need. It’s basic economics, and why “bans” never work unless the government also controls all borders and the means of production of said commodity.
Idiots. They don’t see the non-obvious costs. If they completely ban incandescent bulbs, people are going to get hurt. Why? Compact florescent bulbs, like all florescent lights, don’t start so great in cold. Got any unheated space that has lights? I know I do. I have a pole barn with that I’ve put CFLs in since it’s 25 feet up and there’s usually equipment under them. When it’s below 40 they take a long time to brighten up. I don’t know that they’d come on at all below 0.
People are going to get hurt in poorly lit spaces that otherwise would have been brightly lit by incandescents.
I see I’ll have to start stockpiling light bulbs along with food and ammo.
Let’s see, half dozen bulbs per year and figure maybe another 25 years…
No you aren’t alone.
And just how much energy do the ‘CFL’ bulbs save? Please include the bio-hazard costs.
And what about those of us who can’t stand the quality of light that CFL’s produce? Always gives me a damn headache.
Guess I need to stock up on lamp oil and candles, ‘cuse I sure as hell won’t have any of those damn CFLs in my house.
“compact florescent bulbs,”
Don’t some of those have a small amount of mercury in them?
My incandescent bulbs are 100% efficient. Most of the summer I go to bed when the sun goes down so I don’t use them. In the winter I need the extra heat.
What a great country. Force us to put fuel in our cars with additives that actually REDUCE MPG. Plus, said additives are inefficient to produce. That’s saving energy.
So, how long before lamp manufacturers simply put 2, 3, or 4 sockets in a lamp so you can stick multiple bulbs in to get the light you want? Two 60-watt bulbs anyone. Whoops, there goes that 100-watt savings.
What a load of carp™.
You know – I have replaced all but 4 blubs in my apt (1 in the fridge, and 3 globe-style ones in the bathroom) with CFLs; and I think this is a load of hooey.
CFLs have been getting better, and a lot of the scaremongering above is no longer accurate; but that’s a decision for the individual to make, not Congress…
They have definitely gotten better, but they still give off a very fake light. The ones that closely match incandescent I think are too yellow. There’s also the issue of having fixtures that take 50 watt halogens. Presumably they could be replaced with LEDs, but LEDs, in terms of providing a soft light, are even worse than CFLs.
Fair enough. One of the reasons we went to CFL was the availability of so-called “True Light” bulbs, which can be surprisingly harsh. And some of the cheaper CFLs we have are rather yellow (and have a warm-up time as well).
Never got into halogens, the college I went to banned them in the dorms after a couple of combustion incidents… (They’re the landlords, they can make the rules).
Paint choice can mitigate, but you shouldn’t have to repaint as well as change your bulbs.
I’m a booster of CFL, obviously, but as I said, that’s my choice, and yours, not the .govs. If nothing else, banning the competition will reduce innovation, and CFLs are by no means strictly better than incandescents, there’s trade offs involved in both. If there weren’t, this wouldn’t be a controversial choice.
I’ve used compact CFLs in the UK for a few years now. They used to be a bit dull. They have got a lot better. With the cost of electricity and the fact that the price of CFLs has fallen away, most people in the UK are changing to CFLs.