The Free Market, And the CFL (No, Not the Canadian Football League. )

Glenn and Don are all lit up about Compact Fluorescent Lighting… (CFL).

Don links the argument to the overall global warming scare:

Only 2 percent of India is air-conditioned versus 71 percent of the United States. India not only is further south but it has nearly four times the U.S. population.

Now would be a good time to make sure India gets its air-conditioning right to protect the planet.

Instead, we are worrying about what kind of light bulbs Wal-Mart sells.

More than 40 percent of the world’s population lives in China or India. Exempting them reveals the global warming crowd has another purpose.

Those of us who doubt them are “global warming deniers,” to quote Ellen Goodman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

I prefer Doubting Thomas. It is more fitting. Global warmers believe without proof. I want proof. But believers claim if we wait until there is proof, it will be too late. How convenient.

Global warming is a faith-based initiative. Upon reflection, the religiosity of the environmental movement is to be expected.

Socialism is secularist, even anti-religion. But man needs religion. Global warming fills that need for some.

Don, of course, is quite correct here.  However, I am nothing if not a pragmatist. With regards to automobiles and trucks and what not, I’ve said repeatedly that if you have an automobile/truck that will seat six comfortably, carry all their stuff, performs reasonably well, and yet will get 60 MPG, and also pulls a 6000lb. trailer without getting into trouble, bringing out on the open market, and let the market decide. Meanwhile, leave what I have alone.  I have what I have because it works. Keep government out of the equation … in other words don’t force us, by means of law, into such vehicles, because it’ll never work that way. We killed off our own auto industry, trying to regulate ourselves into fuel efficiency.  It doesn’t work.  People simply don’t want to buy the results.  Let the market decide.  I believe in what works.  So does the marketplace.

So let’s examine all this CFL business, from a practical perspective and leave the attachments to the religion of global warming to one side:

The costs, both monetary and environmental, are about a wash… the lower power costs are not quite covered by the increased initial cost, though the initial costs are starting to come down as production ramps up.

Also, there are some situations which CFL’s simply don’t work well.  For example outside lighting which is required, on all at once is out of the question.  I do have a couple CFL’s in positions around the house where static lighting… stuff that’s on all the time. But in the cold around here they generally take 10 minutes to come up to full brightness. Of course, in one such situation that actually works to our advantage; I’ve installed a four bulb fixture in the bathroom, just recently… and that much light, coming on all once, at 3:00 AM when you stumble into the bathroom, would likely blind you at least temporarily.  As it is, these bulbs, come on at approximately a quarter of their full brightness initially and then slowly ramp up to full brightness.  So there are situations in which that works ideally.  The less than ideal spots we can work our way around, given the chance.

All that said though, the current state of the legislation surrounding mercury, leaves me wondering what I’m gonna do with them once they start burning out.  The law of unintended consequences would seem to apply here.  Given that situation, CFL’s are not exactly an environmentalist’s panacea.  But you may notice that they are selling rather well, even outside of California who was stupid enough to issue mandates about incandescent bulbs.

Why is that stupid?  Because it’s simply not practical.

Let’s imagine that we actually turn the free market loose to invent as they see fit.  Let’s imagine that as a result of that somebody comes along with a more efficient technology in terms of lighting.  How would we get it past the barrier of the existing laws?

Government, you see, cannot create, it can merely limit.  Do we really want a limit on our ability to invent?  Further, in the case of California, there is the additional factor of mercury being tagged as a hazardous waste.  Thereby rendering all CFL’s as such, as well, since they contain it as a matter of design. Yet more unintended consequences. Further, given the state of light emitting diode technology I don’t know as we can consider CFL’s to be anything but a stepping stone. The issue for the intrusive government, thereby, becomes how to deal with legislating for whatever possibility comes.  The answer, of course is, they cannot.

Thereby the best policy is to get the government to stay out of the way of technology, and invention.
As to Walmart, and their move as regards CFL’s, I wonder about the motivations, there.  Certainly, they have the right to sell whatever they feel will sell. That’s up to them. But to attach such sales to some “enlightened environmentalism” seems misguided at best, given the mercury contained in the bulbs.  I also wonder about the total effect of Wal-Mart bending over forward for the environmentalist religion.  Now I will grant you, that there is very little in the brain of a leftie environmentalist.  But I’m actually seeing comments about how using such bulbs will reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  I find an amusing on several points, among them

1. I know very few oil fired electricity plants.
2. Since plastic is not a design factor in incandescent lighting, but is a major factor in fluorescent lighting, I should think if anything increased oil usage would be the role, not a lessening of it.

Bottom line:

There are situations where that CFL’s work quite well. There are others where they do not work well. But that is for the individual, and the market, collectively, to decide. That process is a place where government has no place…

And, spare me the platitudes about how you’re saving the environment by using them.  You’re not.