With all of the problems facing America one would think that concern over the demise of the incandescent light bulb in favor of the more cost efficient CFL bulbs should be a non issue. After all, although costing more up front, the new bulbs last far longer and use much less energy. But not so in the insane world of the far right and the members of the GOP who constantly prostitute themselves to this forever aggrieved group. Once again, I have to wonder how the Hell people become so insane and so enraged over something so insignificant. The Daily Beast looks at this batshitery. Here are excerpts:
[O]ne fact about this new budget is worth contemplation. It carries forward the culture war over light bulbs. Yes, light bulbs. And the reasons for the light-bulb culture war? Well, pretty much the same reasons for the rest of the culture war. Light bulbs became culture-war fodder about three years ago when they started to look like curly fries at Arby’s. They started costing more. They got… funny. And confusing. Now we had to learn about things like “lumens”—which sounds vaguely European, like some legume favored by those socialized-medicine-loving people of Scandinavia. Of course this happened after Obama became president. And, of course, libruls and gummint people started talking them up.
But it was George W. Bush’s Department of Energy that got this ball rolling, back in 2007, and the light-bulb industry immediately embraced the switchover to CFL bulbs (compact fluorescents—the squiggly spiraley ones) because they had the technology on hand to start making them and capture market share. They last far longer than incandescent bulbs and save enormous amounts of energy. If every American household replaced 15 old-style bulbs with 15 CFLs, or better yet LED bulbs (the ones that often have that kind of fan-like look on the narrow part of the body leading up to the bulb), we’d save an equivalent of more than 40 power plants’ energy output.
If liberals are for it, they automatically turn anti. A study last spring by a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania found the following: She took two sets of liberals and conservatives and explained to them that CFL bulbs cost more upfront but saved money over the long haul and could reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. At this point, liberals and conservatives reacted with more or less equal enthusiasm. But then? As Grist reported it: “Slap a message on the CFL’s packaging that says ‘Protect the Environment,’ and ‘we saw a significant dropoff in more politically moderates and conservatives choosing that option,’ said study author Dena Gromet.”
So if official, educated-seeming people say it’s good for the planet, oppose it. Even if you liked it before you knew it was good for the planet.
Michele Bachmann was once the czarina of this counter-revolution, but now that she’s leaving, this constituency has its heroic avatar in the person of Mike Burgess, a congressman from, where the hell else, Texas.
Burgess likes to rail against these pushy liberals and their tricky, communistic light bulbs. He recruited Joe Barton (a fellow Texan) and Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn (not exactly the House’s brightest… bulbs) to draft pro-old-bulb legislation. In this budget, he’s tucked in a provision that would bar funding for enforcement of the new light bulb standards.
This is just so far beyond ridiculous. Light bulbs as a source of elitist resentment? Conservatives get angry when liberals sneer at them for being stupid, and sometimes liberals are condescending, and conservatives have a right to be angry. But another way to keep people from sneering at you for doing stupid things is not to do such stupid things.
[M]aybe GE can invent a CFL bulb that doubles as something you can affix to the end of your shotgun and take out into the woods and kill endangered species with. Then the Texans’ll snap ’em up.
And people wonder why I left the GOP? I would need to have a lobotomy to remain a Republican.
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