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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.
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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!
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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.
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