Sometimes I think it's the environmentalism that brings out the most stubborn departure from logic and capacity for empathy in people, more so than the other great mysteries of life: religion, sport, and how much those French cartoons I used to watch as a kid gave me this smoky, sinuous image of women like a burning willow tree and seared it into my brain like a cattle prod cradled against a milky white breast-- so yes, it's the environment that really does the screwing with the train of thought, or with track by... how we perceive things. So what brought this on was a couple slashdot stories about light bulbs: first one about how Walmart is planning on carrying only compact fluorescents in the future, because they're much more attractive from an inventory standpoint and selling one beats selling seven incandescents, and the other about a bill in the California Assembly to ban incandescent lightbulbs.
There are certainly reasonable criticisms of this being a typical California "Our only tool is a hammer to hit ourselves in the head with" approach, where they specify a single, crudely drawn solution and then implementation of all the details and any secondary effects are handled by magic fairies (110% of the budget will be spend on education, other states will sells us cheap power, all cars will run on sunshine, hail Caesar). There are a lot of reasons not to use CFLs that each individually apply to a small number of people, like those sensitive to flicker, artists and museums, or people making movies (although that's all done in Mumbai and Bucharest now), or more generally anybody with a really small light fixture or a dimmer. Now that I've taken my cheap shots at California I can acknowledge that this bill is probably procedural, and serves the actually useful purpose of opening up a discussion as to how California should push conservation.
What kills me though is some of the really strained objections. Like the argument that CFLs would create a class system based on lighting by which only the rich could afford to have quality lighting in their homes, because the bulbs that cover a broad range of the lighting spectrum are expensive. That isn't totally out of left field, but I think the people who can't finance a light bulb have worse problems than the quality of their light fixtures... I don't think the cold, harsh light is going to ruin the effect of that Van Gogh they have hanging on the wall. I also particularly like those who question of cost savings on virtually any energy efficient device by noting that the old, inefficient device kicks out so much heat they can save a penny a month on natural gas. If you think a fucking light bulb is the most efficient way to heat your house, maybe you should just open your refrigerator at night in the summer to save on the expense of purchasing and powering a night light, since the fridge light is always on anyways, right? I did have a girlfriend who left her electric oven on all night so she could save on her heating bill, but at least she was doing it because she could stick her landlord with the electric bill (and the curiously high fire insurance premium). But really, may favorite objection is those people who note that CFLs don't work if you have really bad wiring. Which again is one of those mote in your neighbor's eye kind of issues, if you have electrical wiring so bad you can't run a light bulb off of it, and you don't think this is a problem so long as you can find some incandescent bulb that will flicker along with the fluctuating current and burning smells coming from behind the walls.
What causes the stubborn desire to find a crack in the CFL plan and widen it by any hyperbole necessary is obviously the fact that environmentalism is ultimately a lifestyle critique. I'm lazy, so I don't fix the drafts from my windows and run the heat too high to compensate, but I do like to pat myself on the back whenever I take the bus (instead of walking, because I'm lazy) for supporting mass transit. And it is that lazy hedonism that prevents me from doing any of the things I can do, from thinking ahead so I can waste less. And meanwhile the eye of my internal environmental conscience wanders over my apartment and my lifestyle with the same disapproving gaze as my mother... neither one of them is saying anything, but you know now that you mention it, they both do think like I'd feel a whole lot better and healthier if only I'd clean up my kitchen / Mother Earth / whatever. Actually, in light of that particular metaphor, it's ironic that I keep killing my mother's plants every time I go over to water them.
There are certainly reasonable criticisms of this being a typical California "Our only tool is a hammer to hit ourselves in the head with" approach, where they specify a single, crudely drawn solution and then implementation of all the details and any secondary effects are handled by magic fairies (110% of the budget will be spend on education, other states will sells us cheap power, all cars will run on sunshine, hail Caesar). There are a lot of reasons not to use CFLs that each individually apply to a small number of people, like those sensitive to flicker, artists and museums, or people making movies (although that's all done in Mumbai and Bucharest now), or more generally anybody with a really small light fixture or a dimmer. Now that I've taken my cheap shots at California I can acknowledge that this bill is probably procedural, and serves the actually useful purpose of opening up a discussion as to how California should push conservation.
What kills me though is some of the really strained objections. Like the argument that CFLs would create a class system based on lighting by which only the rich could afford to have quality lighting in their homes, because the bulbs that cover a broad range of the lighting spectrum are expensive. That isn't totally out of left field, but I think the people who can't finance a light bulb have worse problems than the quality of their light fixtures... I don't think the cold, harsh light is going to ruin the effect of that Van Gogh they have hanging on the wall. I also particularly like those who question of cost savings on virtually any energy efficient device by noting that the old, inefficient device kicks out so much heat they can save a penny a month on natural gas. If you think a fucking light bulb is the most efficient way to heat your house, maybe you should just open your refrigerator at night in the summer to save on the expense of purchasing and powering a night light, since the fridge light is always on anyways, right? I did have a girlfriend who left her electric oven on all night so she could save on her heating bill, but at least she was doing it because she could stick her landlord with the electric bill (and the curiously high fire insurance premium). But really, may favorite objection is those people who note that CFLs don't work if you have really bad wiring. Which again is one of those mote in your neighbor's eye kind of issues, if you have electrical wiring so bad you can't run a light bulb off of it, and you don't think this is a problem so long as you can find some incandescent bulb that will flicker along with the fluctuating current and burning smells coming from behind the walls.
What causes the stubborn desire to find a crack in the CFL plan and widen it by any hyperbole necessary is obviously the fact that environmentalism is ultimately a lifestyle critique. I'm lazy, so I don't fix the drafts from my windows and run the heat too high to compensate, but I do like to pat myself on the back whenever I take the bus (instead of walking, because I'm lazy) for supporting mass transit. And it is that lazy hedonism that prevents me from doing any of the things I can do, from thinking ahead so I can waste less. And meanwhile the eye of my internal environmental conscience wanders over my apartment and my lifestyle with the same disapproving gaze as my mother... neither one of them is saying anything, but you know now that you mention it, they both do think like I'd feel a whole lot better and healthier if only I'd clean up my kitchen / Mother Earth / whatever. Actually, in light of that particular metaphor, it's ironic that I keep killing my mother's plants every time I go over to water them.
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