Say Your Goodbyes to Edison’s Light Bulb

We’ve known this was coming for a while now, and still… it just feels wrong.

(via CBS Baltimore) – The days on incandescent bulbs are dimming. It’s been a seven-year phase-out effort by the government. The 100-watt disappeared from store shelves back in 2012. Now this year, they’re pulling the plug on the two most popular incandescent bulbs–the 40 and the 60-watts.

The switch-over does not mean the end of incandescents. Some of these bulbs will stay on store shelves, like the 150 and the 25-watt. These bulbs are not as common as the 40 and 60, and so they won’t affect your power bill as much.

Bulbs with all the same lumens, but left to right: GeoBulb LED (7.5 W), typical incandescent (70 W), typical CFL (13 W). Photo via ‘trenttsd’

I’ve got no issue with technology and progress. My problem is with choice, as in: “I don’t have one now”.

But here’s a few other thoughts on this, some of which we covered in a post over a year ago:

I’m STILL more ticked off at Dubya for signing this than anything else he ever did.
Didn’t we go through this same thing with 5-gallon flush toilets? Has everyone been ecstatic with your “new” toilets since 1994? They’ve been just great, right?
Virtually ALL of these “new” bulbs are made overseas, although there are a couple domestic manufacturers now making “rough service” bulbs. The last state-side GE plant that made the traditional incandescents closed back in September of 2010. So, in addition to being unpopular, it cost us American jobs, too. Isn’t that swell??
All my life I’ve been told that Mercury is dangerous, which primarily stems from the outbreak of Minamata disease in Japan in the 50′s. Since 2001, at least 20 states have banned mercury “fever thermometers” for medical use, and regulations tighten every year. And in spite of all that, we now have our own Federal Government mandating we put glass-objects-which-contain mercury-yet-break-easily throughout our homes? Gee… thanks, guys!
These new CFL bulbs do not last nearly as long as advertised. I really am sick of this aspect of the alleged debate. CAN some of them last longer? Sure. DO all of them last longer? NOPE: half of the ones we’ve used have lasted roughly the normal (incandescent) amount of time; the other half lasted twice that. None of them lasted anything approaching the “8000 hours” that the package promised. Not. One. ….And since they ALL cost about four-to-ten-times as much (or more), if only half them last barely twice as long, …well, the math isn’t making my debit card very happy.

Technology is trying furiously to keep up with these regulations, and new bulbs are popping-up on the market which are lasting longer. Costs will eventually come down to some degree, …and yet:

Did we really need the heavy boot of government to essentially outlaw a perfectly fine piece of technology? Answer: yes, …at least according to our betters in the Federal Government. See, “we” can’t be trusted to do what they WANT us to do without being forced.

So they force.

As I mentioned yesterday, we’re no longer being allowed to sit on the sidelines or opt-out of any of these discussions: we’re (once again) being MADE to care.

So as you remember the good ol’ days, back when you could buy any light bulb you wanted (or health insurance policy, or toilet), take a listen to this video from ReasonTV’s Remy, released in 2011.

It’s still as funny as it was back then, with its faux-nostalgia over the incandescent bulb.

The difference is that today, …it truly IS nostalgic: