I’m sure you have probably heard this story already, but I just think it’s really funny so I wanted to point it out to you again.
Here’s the deal, what they are trying to do is outlaw the incandescent light bulb to force people to use the flourescent bulb because it uses less energy. They estimate that it will save each household around $40 – $50 per year.
So this is where it got funny to me.
The savings we are talking about, boil down to $4.16 per month. So California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine wants to pass a law to make it illegal to use an incandescent light bulb just to save $4.16 per month per household in electricity. If you think about the number of people that live in California it sounds like a huge savings as far as energy goes but… this is going to be a LAW.
So my questions are:
1) How do you determine if someone is using incandescent bulbs or not? How will they police this?
2) What is the penalty if someone is caught using an incandescent bulb? Is there jail time for repeat offenders?
3) How much will it cost to enforce this law?
4) Why not just try to get a marketing campaign going to encourage using flurescent bulbs?
5) Will this create a black market for incandescent bulbs in California? (Anyone want to start a smuggling ring?)
Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to just build a new power plant or come up with some sort of way to produce electricity from the ocean which California seems to have a bunch of?
Isn’t there something better for a politician to do? Here’s the story:
California could outlaw traditional lightbulbs by 2012 – Jan. 31, 2007