mlbright's shared items

M-L's occasional ramblings.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

not the brightest solution

When Lemon pointed out to me that Ontario was banning incandescent light bulbs, I was wondering what our provincial government was smoking. I thought the city's "upgrade your toilet" campaign was weird, but it was voluntary and sort of made sense.

I think I know why this bulb thing is going down.

It has become impossible for politicians to even suggest that electricity should stop being subsidized at current levels. Everyone knows that we're all paying substantially less for electricity than what it really costs: why would we change our consumption habits or buy new technology to limit it? This, despite the August 2003 blackout.

Faced with a difficult political dilemma, what does our government do? Brainwash us and outlaw perfectly good technology. This is completely backwards and idiotic. What they should do is make people pay more for what they use, and let economizing technologies take hold. No brainwashing, no guilt trips, no wasted advertising money.


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