Want a glimpse of the future? Take a look at the UK. Last year, the British government asked store owners to voluntarily stop selling 150-watt incandescent bulbs. Then just a few days ago, some UK retailers started phasing out sales of 100-watt bulbs, prompting consumers to purchase as many as they could get their hands on. Next year, 60-watt bulbs will follow. In three years the "voluntary" phase will end, and by 2016, store owners will face criminal charges if they sell incandescents.
Welcome to the forced age of the compact fluorescent light (CFL) – an age that will arrive in the U.S. in just five years.
Recently, when the change was made to CFLs in Cuba, government workers actually went house to house, replacing incandescents with CFL bulbs. Of course, that's how they do it in a totalitarian regime. Here in the U.S. they'll be a little subtler about it. But the end results will be the same: Forced change. Someone will get much richer (not you or me, of course). And an ecological disaster will begin to slowly take shape.
Cat factor
Want to go to the South Pacific? We'll get back to CFLs in a moment.
Macquarie Island is a remote spot Europeans began visiting about 200 years ago. In a couple of decades, rats and mice from European ships began to overrun the island, so cats were introduced to control the rodent population. Eventually, the booming feral cat population killed off many thousands of seabirds. So in 1985, environmentalists began exterminating the cats, and the seabird population bounced back.
But then, with no cats around, populations of rats, mice, and rabbits also resurged – so much so that widespread destruction of vegetation caused soil erosion, leading to the collapse of cliffs and bluffs, prompting significant loss of…yep…seabird nests. So the new plan is to exterminate all the rats, mice, and rabbits. Hey – what could possibly go wrong?
The moral: Mess with Mother Nature at your peril. And messing with Mother Nature is exactly what's behind the change from incandescent bulbs to CFLs.
Out of sight…out of your mind
CFLs use less energy, so when everyone starts using them, mercury emissions from power plants will drop. Or so we're told. I've got to think that mercury emissions will continue at a pretty high level since most of us will still be using refrigerators, computers, air conditioners, etc.
There are plenty of flaws in the justifications for forcing this new technology on all of us, but the one flaw that stands out in the most glaring way is mercury – a very dangerous neurotoxin.
CFLs contain mercury, so each unit should be disposed of in a hazardous waste collection facility. And because they're difficult to recycle, you can be certain most of them will be tossed in the trash where they'll get broken. They can break in your home, exposing you to mercury. They can break in the garbage truck, exposing sanitation workers to mercury. They can break in the landfill, exposing groundwater to mercury. And when the day comes that every light socket in every U.S. home is filled with a CFL, there will be thousands and thousands of CFL bulbs thrown away each day. And the mercury load in our environment will mount and mount and mount…
If this ISN'T an ecological disaster in the works, I'll be very pleased to admit I got it wrong. I hope I've got it wrong. But I don't think so.
Please share this e-Alert with your friends. I don't believe most people are aware of CFL dangers or that incandescent bulbs won't be sold in the U.S. after 2014. Hopefully we can encourage lawmakers to come to their senses and reverse this truly awful program.
You can read about other CFL flaws in the e-Alert "Light Bulb Moment" (2/27/08).
HERE; www.hsibaltimore.com/ealerts/ea200802/ea20080227a.html
www.healthiertalk.com
Sources:
"Revolt! Robbed of Their Right to Buy Traditional Light Bulbs, Millions are Clearing Shelves of Last Supplies" David Derbyshire, Daily Mail, 1/7/09, dailymail.co.uk
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