[Consumer Alert] Raise your hand if you're a fan of CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, for the uninitiated). The EPA propaganda, I mean, lowdown, on its EnergyStar.gov Website, goes like this:
If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.But wait jest a minute there, partner. Texas Republican Congressman Ted Poe claims the bulbs are bad, bad, bad. They're filled with mercury and therefore shouldn't be thrown away in the trash but dropped off at a recycling center. Plus, there's quite a scary ritual that must be gone through if/when they break in your home.
And how many know that incandescent bulbs will be banned by January 2014 (per the Clean Energy Act of 2007)?
Here to shed light on the badness is Mr. Poe (whom, from the sounds of his outrage, I'm guessing has a soon-to-be-defunct light-bulb plant in his district). [Jerre Wroble]
Mercury is a deadly poison. Perhaps the messenger in this case is a loon, but what about this aspect?
ReplyDeleteThere is mercury and it should be dropped off at a recycling center.
ReplyDeleteBUT
By using incandescent bulbs, we are burning so much more coal with and creating more uncontrolled mercury contamination all over the state. I'll take the compact fluorescent over the incandescent any day -- but here's hoping they'll figure out something better than CFLs soon.
Just wanted to add something to his whine about the bulbs being made in China --
ReplyDeleteWhat's stopping us from making them here? Could it be . . ."free trade?"
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps Mr. Congressmen and go get yourself a CFL plant build.