EU lightbulb ban: a bad law made to be broken?

[matgb]

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)

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.

Comments

[83_tauri]

Speaking personally, I have to say that I've come to prefer energy-efficient bulbs. When I had key-system electricity a few years ago, it really was the case that every penny counted, as it was so ridiculously expensive. Although the efficient bulbs cost more upfront, I found that using them knocked about 10% off my weekly electric bill.

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.

[matgb]

Oh, in most cases I prefer them, and we use them a lot in the house.

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.

[83_tauri]

Oh, all good points, certainly. And I will confess that I still use a single surviving incandescent in my timer-switched alarm lamp (which is a good thing, actually - when it inevitably goes plink-pop, I will have to get off my backside and sort my dysfunctional sleeping habits out!).

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!

[matgb]

Yeah, it's one of the problems with being on this side of this particular debate. My 'allies' are europhobes, climate deniers and frothing lunatics.

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.

[83_tauri]

I know that there is such a thing as daylight-mimicing flourescents, actually. I was going to give them a go a while ago. I should probably dust that plan off, actually...