Blacklocks- Gov’t Rethinks Climate Claim
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault yesterday banned the sale of lightbulbs once touted by his department as climate-friendly energy savers. Compact fluorescent bulbs in fact contained toxic mercury blamed for poisoning the environment.
Cabinet earlier promoted compact fluorescent bulbs as an energy-saving alternative to traditional, mercury-free Edison bulbs. A 2003 Project Porchlight campaign gave away 200,000 compact fluorescents as good for the environment and drove sales to 27 million mercury bulbs a year.
Maybe Reason can add Herr Gruber to it’s “Great Moments in Unintended Consequences” series.
This was foreseeable, and had the market been allowed to work, we would have gotten LEDs faster rather than taking a side trip down the CFL dead end.
Asshats. Never mind the millions of T12 and T8 fluorescent tubes in use by virtually all older commercial and institutional buildings (and also some residential).
Everybody questioned the sanity of switching to CFL’s for supposed environmental reasons. Politicians and/or their backers must have had investments in CFL.
Bingo!
Don’t forget that it was a “Conservative” government (Harper) that banned the incandescent light bulbs. Pleasing your enemies……..
100 Watt incandescent bulbs were banned under Harper.
ya,
the funny things that for instance, work with partial voltage, say for instance in emergency you string car batteries together get maybe 48 volts voila. and note, thats DC
also they come on instantly in -40 C (same # F) the reason the vulnerable tungsten filament is isolated in a vacuum. likewise say specifically designed as an oven lite.
and cheap.
but . . . . . . liberals . . . . . . .
Safe and Effective.
Not enough of them had a “Made In China” label
Another of endless limitless examples of what the government does turns to garbage.
That’s what they do, without any observable reason other than ideology.
They live and feed of the ideology.
The plebeians are there to supply the extortion carbon taxes.
There is little doubt that Guilbeault is the absolute stupidest MP in Canada. Only AOC in the U.S. is dumber, but thankfully she is not our idiot.
We desperately need an election to rid ourselves of these political buffoons
Ummm, I don’t know. Climate Barbie and the troll, never mind His Highness, could give him a contest on stupid. Then there is Blair, Jody and what’s her name Anan (past Defense minister) to bring up a few more special case.
There are just so many to choose from.
“Which is the shortest dwarf?” type question.
It’s what you get when people running things suffer no consequences for their decisions.
Don’t all flourescent bulbs have mercury? The big ones were fun to stick in the garbage can, and then pop, they imploded so nice!!
Now that I use only mandated LED’s, my electric bill has skyrocketed because they’re so versatile and I can put them anywhere. I used to have 2 80 or 100W bulbs in my garage, now both the LED’s are 150watts! I love running them because I can feel the climate boiling when I have them on.
The thing with incandescents is they give off heat and can be used to warm things up such as snow collecting on traffic lights in a snow storm whereas LED just allow the snow to obliterate the lights. They are also good chicken coops.
I used to have six quartz bulbs in the basement. Never had to turn the heat on in winter. Now …. That’s a different story.
We use quite a few incandescent bulbs in our house; bought a bunch before they went away when we lived in NY (now in the Midwest). And halogen, and just a couple LEDs, the latter which I’m not fond of. Always hated all of the “energy efficient” bulbs.
About 5 years ago in the House of Representatives a congressman held up a CFL and explained to the Speaker that if he should drop the bulb and it break, the entire chamber would be deemed toxic and thus requiring a hazmat cleaning detail. Pols everywhere are just too dense to understand basic facts when presented clearly.
“ mercury blamed for poisoning the environment.”
Really? Doesn’t mercury come from the “environment”?
No, no!. You must understand Green Science. Some atoms and molecules are evil. We must pay homage to the Green Church to save us from evil.
Hydrocarbons, Co2, and plastics … Oh My! Save me Oh Great Green Turtle!
I remember when these stupid bulbs were introduced as the 2nd coming. What a steaming pile and guilbeault stinks along with it.
I remember a fun campaign to mail ‘special’ bulbs to David Suzuki.
Now whose idea was that??
Good times!!
You can’t even get rid of them without the city holding a special drop off day for toxic waste.
I have several of them sitting in ziploc baggies in the garage and I keep missing the special waste drop off days.
Mail them to Guilbeault.
Ah….a blast from the past!
What gives Guilbeault the right to arbitarily go around banning and mandating things? Do we live in a Demoracy, Liberal or not?
OK Two rhetorical questions in one post.
Steven was involved with Cycle Capital and benefitted from Canadian tax dollars and they have an office in China too. Is Steven’s ban on fluorescent an environmental or a monetary decision I wonder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-4ZvOD4_Hg
A new Monty Python skit weekly. All I’m missing: English accents.
They were horrible little light bulbs anyway, and we were told very early on of the mercury hazard. Why they weren’t banned outfight back in the day was a mystery. Check donations perhaps?
UreaFFI installation and subsequent removal programs taught Canadians nothing about the stupidity of their governors.
Wait until you find out about the long-term effects of the heavy metals in burned out LED bulbs.
Most government blunders are proceeded by someone screeching ‘THE GOVERNMENT MUST DO SOMETHING’. As many of our government representatives are charmers with bright smiles but little or no industry or practical experience, their first act is to throw money at the perceived problem. Next time you hear a politician claim that they invested N million dollars ask what was achieved. The proper response may have been to do nothing but that can be interpreted as not caring and doesn’t get votes. Government is the best argument for limited government.
Every modern environmental catastrophe is the result of a government policy.
Cheap Edison bulbs were banned just as the last (cartel owned) patents on some of the automated machinery used in their production expired. Then its much more expensive purported replacement, the energy saving “photonic bulb” failed to “graduate” for $ome rea$on. Its close relative did move forward as your cellphone’s viewer/ touch screen so that helped a little…
Speaking of cheap “CF’s …