A bright future? I don't really see it.

I was up working late, again, last night and I found myself squinting more and more while trying to read the words on the laptop screen. I initially blamed my clouded vision on the fact that, in the past few days, I've had about as much sleep as a long haul trucker hauling energy drinks and coffee beans on a three day coast to coast trip who is sampling his freight and swallowing copious amounts of "Speedballs". I then feared it was middle age manifesting itself through the shortening of my arms, which in turn had changed the relation between my head and the screen causing the entrenched focal length of my eyes to become out of whack. After all, the past few years have gone by faster than the miles which roll under the aforementioned trucker's semi on a newly paved interstate highway somewhere other than formerly pothole laden Pennsylvania. Thankfully, I was wrong in both these suppositions.

A quick peek under the lampshade of the light to my right revealed the source of my visual frustration. The hotel had installed energy saving, environmentally pure and agonizingly dim compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). These electronically charged spirals were putting out about as much candlepower as the prayer offering candles at an atheist's altar. Having identified the source I relaxed as, after all, I was only going to be in this hotel one more night. Unfortunately, the light bulb of recognition burst when it became apparent these CFLs are the wave of the future thanks to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

Signed in to law December 19, 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is an omnibus energy policy law that consists mainly of provisions designed to increase energy efficiency and the availability of renewable energy. If you ask me, in many ways this omnibus bill misses the boat.

Items addressed in this law include increased Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the current darkened cloud over my desk, Appliance and Lighting Efficiency Standards. Check out some of these not so bright ideas. According to a National Center for Policy Analysis review of the law, under the new standards:

* 100-watt light bulbs are banned entirely in 2012.
* 70-watt light bulbs will have to be 36 percent to 136 percent more efficient.
* 50-watt bulbs must be 50 percent to 112 percent more efficient.
* 40-watt bulbs will have to improve 50 percent to 110 percent.

Incandescent bulbs cannot meet these new standards absent a significant technological breakthrough and currently there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel heralding this. Thus, the common light bulb will soon be extinct.

For all their hype, CFLs are a poor substitute. Not only will they foster return to the darker ages, the supposed environmental benefits are grossly overestimated. And God forbid little Timmy, unable to see well enough in the low light to avoid it, knocks over the floor lamp at the day care center and breaks one of these toxic filled glass grenades. In addition to spreading shards of glass all over the lead painted toys from China that the center picked from the bargain bin at WalMart, the breached CFL will spread "dangerous" amounts of mercury powder in a cloud of death nearly as fatal a the cloud of death surrounding the dirty diaper bin after a lunch of mashed fruit.

From the same NCPA review:

...when a CFL broke in her daughter’s bedroom, Brandy Bridges of Prospect, Maine, called on the state’s Department of Environmental Protection to make sure she cleaned up the broken glass and mercury powder safely. A specialist found unsafe levels of mercury in the air and recommended an environmental cleanup firm, who estimated the clean up cost of at $2,000. Beause her mother was unable to pay the exorbitant cleaning bill, the girl’s room remained sealed off in plastic for more than a month.

Just like electric cars, windmills and Ed Bagley Jr's bicycle powered toaster, CFLs have not caught on with mainstream consumers. The government is required to force feed what it has deemed is in our best interest. Check out this link to see what the dim whits in Washington have come up with. They've been busy little beavers and this bill contains more ideas than Edison's notebook. I am especially proud that this "energy policy" bill includes provisions for Swimming Pool enclosures to prevent drowning and an extension of the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) for another year.

S2