Green Follies Escalate in the Face of Failure

January 20, 2011 07:21


Those widely heralded compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) turn out to be a bit of dud in the real world.

By Ed Lasky at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

From the Wall Street Journal:

California’s utilities are spending $548 million over seven years to subsidize consumer purchases of compact fluorescent lamps. But the benefits are turning out to be less than expected.

California led the way, as it often does with damaging fads, especially those beloved by environmentalists and green energy schemers.  The Golden State has been wonderful for job creation — in Arizona and New Mexico, as businesses flee from high energy costs and move to states with sensible energy — and tax, and regulatory — policies.

In the real world, these buggers burn out at a fast rate.

But back to the bulbs and the dimwitted ones who saddled us with these screwy things.  As Investors Business Daily (and all my family members) noted, the quality of light from CFLs is poor:

Despite governments’ effort to market them, CFLs are not necessarily better. Tests conducted by the London Telegraph found that using a single lamp to illuminate a room, an 11-watt CFL produced only 58% of the illumination of an equivalent 60-watt incandescent — even after a 10-minute warm-up that consumers have found necessary for CFLs to reach their full brightness.
Lack of light isn’t the only drawback. CFLs apparently are so dangerous, the European Commission has to warn consumers of the environmental hazards they pose. If one breaks, consumers are advised to air out rooms and avoid using vacuum cleaners to prevent exposure to the mercury in the bulbs.

Compounding the problem is that these bulbs are usually made in China.

The new House may change that policy; one of the Republican proponents of CFLs, Congressman Fred Upton, has — pardon the pun — seen the light, and from his new post as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, he may do what few politicians ever do: undo the damage they have helped to cause.

General Electric and other politically connected corporations feed off green energy programs

The federal and state governments have been giving away hundreds of millions of dollars to get American companies to invest in green energy plants here in America.  In reality, all too often, these companies take the money and run…to China.

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