Canada will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012 as part of a plan to cut down on emissions of greenhouse gases, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said on Wednesday.
Canada is the second country in the world to announce such a ban. Australia said in February it would get rid of all incandescent bulbs by 2009.
“Making the switch to more efficient lighting is one of the easiest and most effective things we can do to reduce energy use and harmful emissions,” Lunn told a news conference.
Has anyone noticed that these are two Conservative governments that still consider questions about responsible energy use something worth answering?
#20, for somebody who hates religion so much, you sure seem to be fine with the idea that everybody else should be made to live in your ideal world.
Bush’s plan to reduce gas prices – metrication! 🙂
16 and 26 – you should understand we have a flavor of proto-fascist here who consider it a reasonable tactic to identify themselves as “conservative”. The fact their brains are mired somewhere to the Right of Attila the Hun means nothing to what they consider to be a mere semantical jog.
Sometimes they use “neocon”. They always use “patriot”.
I STILl have to point out that Efficentcy, SUCKS..
As more people use less energy, the Corps wont make enough money(in their minds) and will raise the prices…
It only Gives those folks ON TOP more reason to get more money.
ECA –
Looks like you fell asleep in economics class.
Raising the price of a product, when the demand is falling, will cause people to buy even less of that product.
And if you can’t understand that, I have a 1985 Yugo that I would like to sell you, for $10,000.
Misanthrope –
Where do you keep coming up with this insane claim that the “real price of gas is $15/gallon”? As I said previously, even in oil-scarce heavily taxed Europe, gas doesn’t cost even half that much.
Yup. Those gas prices are Algore’s energy plan, not GW’s.
Scott, we DO make good vehicle choices. That’s why there are so many SUVs and trucks.
#37 – Frank IBC,
I have provided that link twice now. Here it is again.
http://tinyurl.com/2n6fyt
#29 – Mark T.
I didn’t say that the price would be charged by the oil company. Just cutting their subsidies will only raise the price to about $4.50 a gallon or so.
The rest of the price would be in shifting our tax burden from our income tax form to the gas pump where it belongs. It’s a tad idealistic, I admit. But, if we don’t talk about it at all, it can’t happen.
36,
Last year, the Toronto Hydro embarked on a huge push to get the citizens of Toronto to reduce their energy use. We listened. In fact, we reduced our consumption so greatly that Hydro profits were significantly reduced. so, they raised rates to make up for the shortfall.
You may be correct theoretically, but ECA is correct practically. No corp loses on profits… that’s mission statement number 1.
In the Netherlands, you pay about 9 dollar per gallon . Most of this is taxes, but people still get into their cars every day.
Any guess who really pushes these laws through. The companies that make them.
Smaller cars would be good. But doesn’t matter. The less you use, the more the price goes up. Exxon/Mobile posted profits today for their refineries division. Cost of oil is down, but they made up for by a doubling of profits from gasoline. Sound familiar. Gas will be down in the fall of 2008 when they will again try to convince you the thieves on the right are not controlling the inflation in your supermarket prices via the cost of oil products. And you should trust their puppets another four years.
How do you say that is GW’s energy plan, when high gas prices are the plan for every liberal who wants to implement Kyoto? A higher gas tax or a carbon tax is what Al Gore has been proposing. When he was Veep, all he could get was a 4c a gallon increase in the gas tax, but the original proposal was for a BTU tax.
#39, heh, your document is almost ten years old. And for there being such a large spread in the estimate $5 – $15, it was nice of you to stick with the higher.
But really, this sort of analysis is about as useful as trying to determine the “real” price of a cheeseburger or a bottle of liquor.
#45 – Mike,
The range is because it depends what you decide to include in your version of the cost. Yes, $5 is the minimum because that includes solely the cost you pay now plus the subsidies to the oil companies. If you believe that 70-130,000 people per year dying of air polution have no value, don’t include them. Then the estimate you choose will be lower. I personally go with the highest because I think that the global warming costs are probably horribly undervalued. If we go extinct, the cost will be immeasurable, literally.
Any comments or corroberation that CFLs have some amount of Mercury in them? It seems to me that we’re saving energy, but creating a disposal hazard, in terms of landfills and broken bulbs. – http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf
Factoring the deaths of those people in your “real” price is as pointless as saying that a Quarter Pounder “really” costs $10 because of all the people who die of heart disease each year. Now I’ll go along with you on the idea that government activities help reduce the cost to bring a product to market… but that is the case universally. So again, what have you shown besides the fact that you just don’t like the spending habits of Americans, and so you’d rather tax them into conformance?
These types of studies do accomplish one thing at least – they keep think-tank economists from getting too bored at work.
#2, #11, #14 – Thanks for the replies, guys. I’ll look in to getting these soon. I feel like the light from these bulbs is cleaner, though my wife has been a harder sell on the issue.
Maybe I’ll pull the “but you’re hurting the environment” card, then cry myself to sleep knowing I used one of the left’s tactics. 😉
I also find it somewhat humorous that this paper wants to add things like sprawl into their true cost of gasoline. Sprawl comes about from people’s desire to move away from highly dense population centers (for any number of reasons such as crime, better schools, claustrophobia), and has very little to do with whatever particular fuel we are currently using for our commute, beyond affordability.
40,
YOU GOT IT….
44.
I want you to understand something…
YOU DONT NEED A SMALL CAR…..GOD, Iv said it before…
I have a 86 OLDMOBILE, it gets 30MPH+ STILL after 20 years…
This thing gets GREAT milage even at 70+mph… It has a V6…NO TURBO… And it AINt going to do 0-60 in 5 seconds…6-7 maybe…
WE HAVE tech that DOES NOT require alot of changes…ONLY for us to LOOK at it, as THINGS HAVE CHANGED sence the STOPPED using the OLD tech… Think of a steam powered car, THAT dont use water….And then takes the material and recondences IT…It dont need to EXPLODE FUEL..
And since toilet paper causes global warming, the true cost of toilet paper must be a dollar a wad.
34 – god – You’re right, but only because of how screwed up our political labels have gotten. I think people who want to constantly tinker with the U.S. Constitution (how many amendments have been proposed for short-term political gain by the Republicans in the last decade?) are revolutionaries. Conservatives are those who want to keep the Constitution intact, including a Bill of Rights the founders considered so important they listed them separately from the main process document itself. That makes me a conservative, but I sure ain’t no neo-con. And thinking about the Dept. of Homeland Insecurity and the drug war enforcement bureaucracies can make me feel sick to my stomach. That makes me a patriot as well as a conservative.
The way people throw “liberal” and “conservative” around in this forum goes beyond silly and well into the absurd sometimes.
It seems to me pretty consrvative to want to end the subsidies we pay to Big Oil and transfer those costs directly to the pump so consumers can at least see them. Calling that a “liberal” tactic is either silly or stupid. Either way, it’s wrong-headed.
We should wait for solid-state lighting tech to mature a little more.
#53 – TJGeezer,
Well said. I’d add that the current Republican Party platform is also not fiscally conservative and hasn’t been for many years. At least since GHWB and possibly Reagan, depending on your opinion of Gush Up Economics, the prior values of the Republican Party are long gone.
Under GHWB, the national debt went from 2 to 4 trillion bucks, in just four years.
That’s not fiscally conservative. The “tax and spend liberals” are more fiscally conservative than the “borrow and spend republicans” in recent years. At least we recognize that the money has to come from somewhere.
ECA –
Steam doesn’t heat itself. You need a fuel such as coal or wood. And a steam (AKA “external combustion”) engine is a much less efficient means of converting heat into kinetic energy. And much dirtier, too. And bulkier. That’s why cars didn’t become practical until the gasoline and diesel engines were invented.
#45 – Mike,
Sorry, I just noticed your comment about the age of the report. There are some updates to it on their site. You can google them if you like.
I think the ’98 report is the most complete, so I continue to use it. But, you make an excellent point. The numbers must be much higher now.
Why must “the numbers…be much higher” now? On what basis do you assume that?
Dunno about you but I converted most of our home lighting to CF but one spot never worked satisfactorily.
I’m in Montreal and here we have cold winter. CF don’t work well in sub-zero temperatures. They just give a dimm yellow ghost of a light even after hours of use.
I tried many models and brands, some very expensive without anyimprovement. So I’m against a total ban on incandescent as long as there is no replacement for every situationa nd use.
GGC