News - Opinion

Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009

Whose not-so-bright idea was this?

We Americans may not think much about choice when it comes to what we buy because we have so many choices. It is the mark of a free marketplace where competition determines winners and losers. It says a lot about a society that puts a high premium on freedom.

Your government, however, has decided that, in 2012, you can no longer choose to purchase and use Thomas Edison’s iconic invention, the 100 watt incandescent light bulb. By 2014, all such bulbs will be banned from sale.

Thanks to a European Union ban on incandescent light bulbs, consumers are cleaning out the shelves to stockpile a supply when they can no longer be sold. As Jason Lomberg, technical editor of Electronic Component News, noted, “The ban has proved to be massively unpopular. All across Europe its media are reporting huge increases in incandescent sales.”

Why were the EU and U.S. bans put in place? It is the view of environmentalists who insist that incandescent bulbs are less energy “efficient” than compact fluorescent bulbs and that consumers must be denied the choice between them.

They are less “efficient,” but it is equally true that the unnatural, bluish light of compact fluorescents takes time to achieve full brightness — about three minutes on average. At least a quarter of them fall short of their rated service life, meaning you will have to buy more of them.

In addition to the fact that some “emit a headache-inducing buzzing sound” the worst thing about fluorescent bulbs is that they contain mercury. As The DeWeese Report points out, they “contain poisonous mercury over 300 times the EPA’s accepted safety level.”

“In addition, days after a bulb has been broken,” noted Tom DeWeese, “vacuuming or simply crawling across the carpeted floor where the bulb was broken can cause mercury vapor levels to shoot back upwards of 100 times the accepted level of safety.”

Who crawls on the floor? Babies! Who’s closer to the floor than you? Pets!

Congress enacted the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that puts the ban in place in 2012.

The Obama administration has declared war on the building of new coal-fired energy plants despite the fact that they currently provide over half of all the electricity we use daily, nor has a new nuclear plant been built in decades.

So, while allegedly seeking “energy independence,” the government is thwarting any new provision of electricity other than impractical and undependable solar or wind.

Where the government finds the justification for destroying your right of choice eludes my grasp.

What it portends are supermarkets with far fewer product and food choices because some special interest group has decided that coercive laws are the best way to take away the freedom of choice that is quintessentially American.

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Alan Caruba, who writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com, is a business and science writer.