Only in California...

[strredwolf]

California wants to ban the incandescent lightbulb.

No joke!  Report from CNN and Reuters. The bill is called the "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act."

Comments

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

I guess that's another reason to never move to California.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

(I can just picture it now. At the border they stop you and ask... "Any Fruits, or Light bulbs?")

[kesarra.livejournal.com]

It's a good idea. CFL's are not expensive in the long run. I really wish they'd set it up for this year. 2012 is too late.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

"You're out of compliance. Your mainframe has 2000 incandescent indicator lights and your christmas tree has 3000 more incandescent bulbs. We're fining you 5 million dollars, $1000 per illegal bulb. We also need to fine you $10,000 for the 10 incandescent bulbs on your car."

[kesarra.livejournal.com]

Time limits are always put on compliance. The clock starts to run after problems are found. I sit on my butt and pay the 5 mil, or spend less than a tenth of that fixing it before the deadline. So putting a deadline in 2012 means the clock starts right then and I'm guessing companies will be given between 6-24 months to comply. So that puts the real deadline back to a maximum of 2014. If there are not enough bulbs to fill the need, then I go to court and get another year or two extension. If the clock starts on 2008, full compliance is reached by 2012. Whether I pay the fine or not, I still have to pay to be in compliance down the road. How much wasted electricity burned out of coal is there in the 4 year gap?

You can get LED xmas bulbs now. Good ones last 10+ years of continuous use. Cheap Incandescent last one month if you're lucky.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Generally the indicator lights would be lit up maybe once a year for a test, and would be dark up until there's a problem or the next test. Granted, most companies have probably switched to LEDs already if they can, but there are many cases where the LEDs are not compatible with whatever voltage the device is putting out. We've generally gone to LEDs where ever we can. There's still many cases where it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever to go with something other than an incandescent bulb. Are you going to force all those kids with easy-bake ovens to use a CFB when it is completely unsuited for the purpose? I'm sure there are many other lurking problems like that where the legislationwonk never even thought it would be a problem. It falls back to the Wizard's Second Rule about unintended consequences.

How about places where the light is rarely on, and you run into the fire-up costs of a CFB? How about a refrigerator light. Every time you open the door, that CFB has to fire up and warm up and could cost you more than an incandescent bulb. Can CFBs even survive in an oven to use for an oven lamp?

I was taught to cook with a real oven. If you want to cook with toys, eat playdough.

[kesarra.livejournal.com]

LED bulbs are already being manufactured. They run right off the wall outlet. They just haven't been given certification for commercial or residential use. The same goes for car lights.

I own an easy-bake oven. It runs on gas and is made by a crummy company. I can't even cook a full blown pizza in it without burning the sides to charcoal. Real ovens (and my own wannabe oven) don't even need lights in them. There was a time when ovens and fridges didn't have lights and there were no microwaves. Millions of people survived and didn't burn dinner. If you can do without light, there's no cost to replace anything.

Re: I was taught to cook with a real oven. If you want to cook with toys, eat playdough.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Ahh, so you're saying that we should do without our advances in technology then eh? Back to the stone age with us? Those hunter-gatherers sure had the life. Never mind the high infant and mother mortality rates, very short lifespans, and extremely poor quality of life. ;)

I have LED lights in some areas of my house. They're really good for flashlights however. You can replace most of the lights in a car with LEDs or Lasers, but the headlights are a different story. I don't see them finding a bright enough replacement for halogens using LEDs anytime soon. Stupid though, because the car light bulbs cause only an minimal increase in fuel consumption. The only reason to go with LED lights is their faster reaction times and the fact that you basically never need to switch them out.

I know people who actively eliminate florescent lights from their workplaces because it hurts their eyes and drys out the air around them. I seriously dislike them because of their perceptible flicker in my peripheral vision and the irritating noise caused by their ballast units. Said ballast units also go out nearly as often as incandescent bulbs. That said, I have them in my house, just not in any place I'm going to spend more than 5 minutes at a time in. (They're in the bathroom, hallway, closets, kitchen, etc.)

What these legislators fail to understand is that what is good for them is not necessarily good for everyone else and there are always situations for which they have not accounted. If they want to discourage these types of bulbs, there's things they can do without being utterly wonkish and anti-freedom. One is, they could give tax credits and discounts to people who utilize a higher percentage of cf bulbs in their house as opposed to incandescent. They could also work with manufacturers to decrease the costs, and have campaigns highlighting the benefits and decreased costs of these bulbs. On the slightly more wonkish side, they could put a sin-tax on incandescent bulbs, bringing the price in closer parity. Of course, what they did instead is the absolute most policywonkish thing they could do, they ban them outright. I guess that's following in california's long history of tightening government control over the everyday lives of their citizens and circumventing the free market at every possible turn. Ahnold is even more of a democrat-in-republicans-clothing than Bush is.

Re: I was taught to cook with a real oven. If you want to cook with toys, eat playdough.

[kesarra.livejournal.com]

Our stone age brethren only working 20 hour weeks. Infant mortality is on the rise as we speak and the average working hours for struggling individuals exceeds 40 hours. Our species would have died long ago if individuals from the stone age lived 100+ years on average. I'm only asking for a little less light in places where light isn't even needed. A real cook knows how to use an internal clock and their nose to cook. Lights are not needed. The visual cues are so obvious in most dishes, I could cook with my eyes caked in morning sleep crust. I'm just asking for fewer specialized incandescent bulbs where they aren't even needed.

If you wanted to do everything in a case by case fashion, you'd either have to get a company to prove itself or spend vast sums of money in paper trails and administrative costs. When companies prove themselves, things get bad. We have labor laws because without them the employees would be killed in droves for pure profit. We have lax laws on food safety and as such tens and hundreds of individuals die each and every day nationally from food poisoning. There isn't enough money to do it all administratively. The country is too far in the hole and so is the state. The law must be all encompassing to minimize the time spent enforcing it. There's an initial cost of enforcement and then there's zero cost to enforce once incandescents are wiped out. Any meter maid can be taught to do a quick spot check to see if incandescents have been installed.

Re: I was taught to cook with a real oven. If you want to cook with toys, eat playdough.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

And here we find the fundamental disconnect. Civilization vs. Barbarism. I, for one, will continue to be on the side of civilization. This romanticism and idealizing of barbarism and primitive culture is one of the silliest things to come out of the modern pseudo-intellectual movement. Many people have said that barbarism only wins if civilization is sabotaged from the inside. It seems to be proving more and more true every day.

Re: I was taught to cook with a real oven. If you want to cook with toys, eat playdough.

[kesarra.livejournal.com]

Stupidity trumps modern civilization: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml07/07096.html
You could call it sabotage.

[trevorcat.livejournal.com]

I suspect that something like this would be enforced store-side. They'd simply stop selling incandescents in the store, and you'd have to buy florescent or something else.