Lights Out

Does anybody remember this golden oldie of a commercial:


A few years ago, in response to the environmentalist concern that standard incandescent light bulbs were destroying the world, the government passed legislation that makes it illegal to sell your basic light bulbs. Instead, starting in 2014, the only legal bulbs will be the toxic mercury-filled compact fluorescents (CFLs). The astounding thing about this decision, made back in 2007, is that the only reason to ban the incandescent was that it did not meet arbitrary standards of energy efficiency. Heralded as a progressive breakthrough toward "smarter energy," everyone assumed that manufacturing giants such as GE would simply convert their U.S. factories to making the new bulbs. Precisely the opposite has happened, as reported by the Washington Post:

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. …

During the recession, political and business leaders have held out the promise that American advances, particularly in green technology, might stem the decades-long decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. But as the lighting industry shows, even when the government pushes companies toward environmental innovations and Americans come up with them, the manufacture of the next generation technology can still end up overseas. …

What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

The resulting savings in energy and greenhouse-gas emissions are expected to be immense. But the move also had unintended consequences.

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

The "unintended consequences" quote above is laughable, because the government was warned. CFLs take a lot of hand labor to produce, and as a result is cheaper to produce in countries that, frankly, don't require union wages in their factories. So, by banning a bulb, the government has helped to close the book on a manufacturing heritage that's as old as … er … the light bulb.

Of course, I admit to a bias against CFLs. I just don't like them much. I prefer the good old soft white incandescent. I figure I've got about 2 years at best to stock up on them, before they simply won't be available anymore. The ban is simply one measure of "progress" that I could do without. Still, I'm certain that banning the bulb will extend the life of our planet by a least a month or two.

On a lighter note, this trip through YouTube looking at commercials from the '80s is kind of fun. Here's another nostalgic GE commercial I remember well. And one more.