??? A provision in the energy bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law by by President Bush is a law that will bar US stores from selling inefficient?incandescent light bulbs. The light bulb as invented by Thomas Edison has made very few changes since the late 1800′s. Now to say that Edison actually invented the light bulb is wrong he figured out how to make it practical.
Anyhow the new law will force everyone to use more efficient forms of lighting. For all intents and purposes though the?incandescent bulb is soon to be a thing of the past. After 2012 the selling of inefficient incandescent light bulbs will be against the law in the United States. The European Union? and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient bulbs in the not too distant future. Australia is the worlds first to outlaw incandescent light bulbs in favor of the more “fuel-efficient, compact fluorescent bulb. This is a great step for our US government but still not enough. This will help some as the savings on electricity alone will mean that we burn less coal to make electricity as the average compact fluorescent burns only 20% of what the same rated incandescent bulb does. Replacing all of our lighting with bulbs of this efficiency will reduce the need for new power plants or the ones we have running at peak operations.
We need to?follow Australians example though and commit to reducing greenhouse gases. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s environment minister says that they intend to “cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by four million metric tonnes a year by 2015.” Citing the “climate changes” the world is facing as a “global challenge,” Turnbell also urged other nations to follow suit in making a difference. What a difference between the Aussies and us in our attitude towards global warming. In the US our very own EPA that is charged with protecting the environment is doing nothing to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases?emitted by our power plants and other industry. Even after a court order they still have not acted. A quick look at their website will show you nothing about reducing greenhouse gases for industry but at least they are working on reducing it from vehicles which comprise the increase of vehicles mileage figures to 35 mpg and the use of renewable fuel up to 36 billion gallons. Actually they did nothing but take claim to be doing something because all of this is covered in the new energy law. Right now it is cheaper for the coal burning power plants to take no action to retrofit their plants with clean coal technologies and wait to see if the EPA decides to fine them or not. In the mean time they are belching tons of carbon dioxide every day. And unfortunately I am afraid this will continue until enough of us vote into office, people who really care about the environment and their constituents who are down wind of the plants in question and have to breath their pollution everyday.