First They Came for the Toilets

Filed under:Not Cool,Politics — posted by Anwyn on January 28, 2010 @ 8:00 pm

…and mandated them all to low-flow, and I said nothing because I didn’t care. I just flushed a few more times … although others took a different approach. At some point they mandated the wine bottles, and I said nothing, because as long as they still have a hole in the top it doesn’t affect me.

Now they’re coming for the light bulbs, and most people seem completely insensible to the danger.

Yet about 75 percent said they are not aware of the impending federal requirement for greater energy efficiency that will lead to the phaseout of less efficient lighting.

“Less efficient” by a standard of raw energy consumed, perhaps. “Less efficient” by a standard of, you know, actually lighting things to a visible spectrum and being safe to handle around your toddler, not so much: Incandescents are far more efficient than flourescents on both counts. And there’s this ill-considered boilerplate from GE:

“We’re not sensing a rush by consumers to comply with the looming federal standards,” Kathy Sterio, GE Lighting’s general manager of consumer marketing said in a prepared statement.

“There’s a major shift to CFLs but it’s clearly is a matter of educated consumers choosing CFLs for their strengths,” she said. “Our marketing, advertising and packaging have espoused the value of energy-efficient CFLs for over a decade.”

Such a charming implication, that those of us who still prefer incandescents are uneducated yokels.

H/t J.



image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace