Kiss your bulbs goodbye

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:03:55 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Joe Farah at World Net Daily - Congress has passed and Bushnev has signed H.R. 6, the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007". This behemoth (270 10-point pages, 125,000 words) phases out the sale of incandescent light bulbs starting in 2012 and totally bans them by 2020. Unless somebody figures out how to defy physics and make them 3 times as efficient by then (45 lumens/watt or as regulated by the Secretary of Energy). A 100 watt bulb currently yields 17.1 lumens/watt. The bill requires all passenger vehicles, including pickup trucks and SUVs, to get 35 miles per gallon, again by 2020. And it mandates improved energy efficiency for new sales of every furnace, air conditioner, electrical appliance, and a whole lot more. Algore's fantasy, enforced at gunpoint. I'm too angry to speak.

I'll be happy to jump on the LED light bandwagon, as soon as the market makes them good enough and cheap enough, but I resent to hell being told by a bunch of ne'er-do-wells on the hill what I may and may not purchase with the shrinking portion of my hard-earned cash that they don't steal in taxes and regulation and inflation.

If government has the power to ban something so incredibly benign and useful as the incandescent light bulb, what doesn't government have the power to do?

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Screwed

Submitted by DaveP on Sat, 22 Dec 2007 19:36:44 GMT

I've got a bunch of art-deco lamps with mogul bases (larger than normal, aka E39). Somehow I suspect they're going to remain with incandescent bulbs.

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