![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
EU lightbulb ban: a bad law made to be broken?
I'm a liberal. I don't like banning things. I'm an environmentalist, I think destroying the planet is a Bad Thing, and am fairly convinced by the science on climate change. But, as is always the case, liberalism wins out. Banning traditional lightbulbs is a bad idea.
Sometimes, they're the most efficient method of both heating and lighting something; lava lamps my be kitsch decorative junk not to everyone's taste, but there's no reason to ban them. Snake and reptile housings also benefit from a combine light/heat source, etc. Sometimes, they're simply a very cheap alternative, and when you're living on very little money at all, and generally don't use lights that much but need to have them, they're an acceptable option.
The answer, therefore, is not to ban them. The liberal answer is to apply a pigouvian tax on them. You can even, if you like, apply a pigouvian subsidy on the much more expensive, complex and hard to dispose of safely "environmentally friendly" bulbs containing mercury and other expensive poisons to make them cheaper. But banning something? It's just asking for trouble:
German heatball wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban | Reuters (via)
Sometimes, they're the most efficient method of both heating and lighting something; lava lamps my be kitsch decorative junk not to everyone's taste, but there's no reason to ban them. Snake and reptile housings also benefit from a combine light/heat source, etc. Sometimes, they're simply a very cheap alternative, and when you're living on very little money at all, and generally don't use lights that much but need to have them, they're an acceptable option.
The answer, therefore, is not to ban them. The liberal answer is to apply a pigouvian tax on them. You can even, if you like, apply a pigouvian subsidy on the much more expensive, complex and hard to dispose of safely "environmentally friendly" bulbs containing mercury and other expensive poisons to make them cheaper. But banning something? It's just asking for trouble:
German heatball wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban | Reuters (via)
Rotthaeuser has pledged to donate 30 cents of every heatball sold to saving the rainforest, which the 49-year-old sees as a better way of protecting the environment than investing in energy-saving lamps, which contain toxic mercury.I think Herr Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law deserve a little bit of praise for their Heatball project. And they're not even breaking the law, just showing it up as the futility it is.
no subject
I was quite surprised by this, so I did a quick estimation and it turns out that lighting can be quite expensive - the problem is that, unlike other appliances, lights will be on for hours at a time.
Also, the nice thing about the efficient bulbs is that they last a lot longer than, say, a Tesco cheapo-bulb (a.k.a click-blink-pop). The upshot is, I feel that they do make sense, particularly for low-income households.
no subject
But there are case uses (see Frith's comment below) where they're more useful, and in some cases essential. And in other cases, flourescents are unusable.
Our living room light has a dimmer switch installed by the landlord. Can't use a flourescent in them. The dimmer 'efficient' bulbs are both very expensive and not that energy efficient.
And while some energy efficient bulbs can last longer, if they're on a light that's turned on and off regularly at short intervals, the lifespan significantly reduces. Sometimes bulbs in the bedroom set (which are supposed efficients) will break faster than bulbs in the living room set (which are flourescents).
One other bugbear. 60watt and 100watt bulbs are banned. 40watts aren't. Our living room, with the dimmer, has one of those candelabra things that takes 3 40watts instead of 1 100watt. So if they're on full power (rare) we use 120 watts instead of 100. If, that is, I've bothered to replace all three, normally I only put 2 in, but I suspect most households will like three.
That's not to mention the way they can play havoc with certain effects (flourescents make my photic sneeze reflex much worse, and can set Jennie's migraine's off), and the light is a different quality, harder to read by, and nowhere near as good to paint with (my days of buying daylight bulbs for the pain table lamp ar elong gone, but I won't use a flourescent in it, I'd rather paint by candlelight, same as I read by.
no subject
Oddly enough, re: any sort of painting, I've never had an issue with flourescents. (And given how picky I am generally, that's little short of a miracle...) Rather with me it seems to be the *level* of the light that's important, rather than the specific type. So if I can maximise the number of lights I have on, without having to feel too environmentally or financially guilty, all the better!
This has mainly become one of my 'windbag' issues due to a silly person they had on the news a couple of years ago. They were interviewed about this, and their argument against it was basically 'Oh my, this is Britain, we don't do Change, nothing can ever Change, it would be unBritish! Oh my, watch me swoon at the thought!' (And I'm not actually straw-manning that much there, either - they *did* actually denounce it all as unBritish!)
It's probably on YouTube somewhere - if it is, it's worth a watch, because it was quite funny in an inverse sort of way!
no subject
I can see the difference in a painted figure done under natural light to one done under natural light, I used to try and put the shop painting table in the window whenever possible because of it, but was told off because, correctly, it does always look damned messy.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Others may spot a gap in the market, but...
LEDs
I was doing a "You and your environment" course at the OU at the time. Yes the bulbs are not cheap, and the ones you can get in B&Q don't give out enough light. But even when you buy the larger units on the internet, you save enough energy to recoup the cost relatively quickly.
I did my own post on this a while back, and had a slightly different perspective.
no subject
no subject
Two notes
2) It's interesting to compare the disappearing incandescent lightbulbs with the disappearing cathode ray television set. The manufacturers have decided, independently and without external influence, to discontinue production of CRT sets, without regard to arguments that the CRT gives better pictures than the flat-panel variety. There's a hidden economic message in this, but I'm blown if I know what it is.
Re: Two notes
Low energy lightbulbs are being imposed by Govt using cack handed authoritarian methods. There's no prestige or need to have them to show off, and people resent being told to switch to something that appears more expensive, even if they know the maths makes things the other way.
In addition, lightbulbs need replacing a lot.
TVs, on the other hand, can last for years, decades even. Manufacturers have a built in desire to get you to change your TV more often than you actually need to, something that isn't true of lightbulbs.
Plus, no one is telling you to get a flatscreen plasma/LCD. Instead, they're simply being presented as 'cool', or a nifty new gadget, or 'better'. It's in the manufacturers interest to present this as true, as it incentivises replacing the older, smaller, less cool CRTs.
Personally, I didn't notice much difference between my parents widescreen plasma mounted on the wall and a normal CRT, and I prefer LCD monitors to CRTs as they take less space and are more easily portable (we're a bit cramped here, as you know).
But there's a clear economic incentive for everyone in the industry to promote non CRT tellies, as it give an extra reason to get a new one before the old one actually goes pop.
Combine that with stuff like easy wall mounting, not really possible with a CRT, and you have a consumer pressure to improve their quality and similar.
Wheareas lightbulbs are just lightbulbs, and the meddling Govt/EU bureacrats are telling me I can't buy the bulbs I'm quite happy with, etc etc.
Re: Two notes
The CRT television set is off the shelves because of decisions from the manufacturers. The incandescent light bulb is off the shelves because of a decision from the regulators. From the customer's point of view, both markets are experiencing a reduction in choice, and that reduction in choice is (in part) from reasons external to the customers.
But no-one is seriously complaining about the death of the cathode ray. Is that because it's the operation of the "invisible hand" as opposed to the very visible hand of the regulators?
Anyway, here's the DW News report on the Heatball.
Re: Two notes
Yes, I realise that it's counter productive not to take into account such bloody-minded attitudes. But lets not pretend it's a normal, or morally neutral attitude.
Re: Two notes
Resenting authority and nanny-knows-best approaches are normally something we tend to encourage. We forget this when they're resenting being told to do something we like. So we need to represent things in a way that doesn't cause resentment.
Re: Two notes
(Anonymous) 2010-10-22 02:00 pm (UTC)(link)I don't see that I was doing anything other than looking at the world as it is. I recognise the need to present things in a way that's not going to cause problematic levels of resistance.
Perhaps we need to ignore the problematic nature of certain people when discussing how to work round them. Because, yeah, maybe these discussions don't occur in a vacuum with only decent enlightened people present.
Personally I value informed scepticism. I value enquiring minds who question authority. I just don't like knee-jerk resentment of authority, or people who witlessly moan about the nanny state.
This is why I'm a supporter of politicians and not myself a politician.