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Monday, May 28, 2007
Today's Sun has an article by Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball called Prove it! that challenges an assumption that's become near and dear to my heart: compact fluorescent light bulbs are better for the environment than incandescent:
Prove it! That's how we must respond whenever governments ban established products to "save the planet."If politicians can't validate their schemes with comprehensive and unbiased scientific studies then they should stop telling us how to live our lives.
Take the recently announced ban on incandescent light bulbs. The federal government's "Action on Climate Change and Air Pollution" boasts the ban "will give Canadian consumers real opportunity both to save money on energy and to help clean up our environment." Prove it!
Show us the results of comprehensive life cycle analyses that demonstrate the energy savings accrued when operating a compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) more than compensates for the increased manufacturing and mercury disposal impacts associated with CFLs. Prove to us that the loss of convenience and light quality of the incandescent is off-set by a significant net environmental benefit. Or many Canadians will conclude the move was purely political, designed to look good in the press and trump the NDP who had a private members' bill banning incandescents in the works.
And when studying this, don't forget to take into account the impact of driving your burnt out bulbs to the landfill. The more I read up on CFB's (compact fluorescent bulbs), the dumber the idea of banning them looks.
Instead of handing more regulatory power to the "pimply minions of bureaucracy," any attempt to regulate Canadians lives, whether large scale or in the minutiae like CFBs, ought to require absolute proof of it's necessity, and that the scheme will work as advertised.
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