Why is it that there are all these right-thinkers eager to protect me from things that I don’t want to be protected from, such as gay marriage, affordable health care and the loss of inefficient incandescent lamps?
In 2007, Congress passed a law mandating higher efficiency standards for light bulbs. It was duly signed by then-President George W. Bush. If bulbs are more efficient, they need less electricity to produce the same amount of light. The less electricity they consume, the less coal that must be burned to generate power, so less pollution and carbon dioxide. And in the summer, with less waste heat from illumination, the less need for air conditioning.
So there was logic behind the law. The main replacement for the incandescent bulb — which hasn’t changed much since Thomas Edison first demonstrated it in 1879 — is the compact fluorescent light.
In general, I don’t have a problem with CFLs. In recent years, we’ve replaced most of our home’s incandescent bulbs with CFLs. Their glow is close enough to the warm yellow light of the old bulbs, and they save on the electric bill.
So I don’t feel any need to be protected from CFLs. But they must scare some people. Rush Limbaugh has argued that “The government ought to have not a damn thing to say about the light bulb I buy.” Michele Bachmann promises that she’ll “allow you to buy any light bulb you want” if she’s president. Sen. Jim DeMint called the law “just another government intrusion in our lives.” It appears that these folks are all fervently “pro-choice” — at least when it comes to light bulbs.
Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who wanted the U.S. to apologize to BP after the Gulf oil spill last summer, recently introduced a bill to repeal the efficiency standard.
It didn’t get enough votes, but it did got me to wondering. I hold no brief for incandescent light bulbs — if I want a traditional warm yellow glow in the evening, I can fire up an old kerosene lantern — but there is plenty of other archaic technology, old methods with some charm, that could benefit from high-level support. We should be reading stories like these:
• Rep. Scott Tipple, a Western Republican, yesterday introduced a bill banning diesel locomotives on American railroads. “We have to import oil,” he said, “whereas America has abundant coal, much of it in my district, to power steam locomotives.” He added that with the return of traditional rail propulsion, Americans would also better understand old phrases like “jerkwater town” and “full head of steam.”
• Computers in the elementary classroom? Not if Southern Gov. Rick Prairie has his way. He has proposed new legislation that would mandate inkwells in all his state’s school desks. “Children who take up keyboarding too early,” he said, “never develop the fine motor skills demanded by the dip pen, nor do they benefit from the character development that comes with mastering Spencerian penmanship with a steel nib.”
• Worried that Americans are losing the art of traditional communication, former congressman Newt Getrich has proposed that Americans be required to forgo e-mail, Twitter and the like, and instead return to the telegram when rapid written communication is essential. “Every schoolchild should be issued a telegraph key and sounder,” he said, “and we should be able to regain our world leadership in Morse code.”
There’s doubtless more archaic technology that might be worth preserving. What’s hard to understand is why they’re so fixated on inefficient light bulbs when they could be promoting inefficient steam locomotives — which are at least fun to watch in operation.
Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
