There’s some utterly depressing reading on Hot News today. Apparently, the European Union intends outlawing bog standard, incandescent light bulbs (yes, light bulbs) by the end of 2012. Instead, we will be forced to use expensive, ‘eco-friendly’ halogen alternatives.
It is depressing enough to read this full stop. It is even more depressing reading it in a country where only 20 years ago it was nigh-on impossible to find anything other than a 40 watt light bulb. The 60 and 100 watt versions favoured (until now) by those who valued their sight were rarities. A generation of Romanians grew up doing its homework in the half-light (when there was electricity, of course). Looks like another will be joining it. Opticians must be delighted at the news.
As of course will be the Romanian melons (green on the outside, red inside; geddit?) who aren’t old enough to remember how awful life actually was before 1989. They will no doubt welcome this as another sign that humanity’s march back towards the stone age is picking up pace.
Candles out for the lads!
*Yes, we know he lives in North Korea with Elvis, but why spoil a good headline?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Mankind is terribly un-efficient. With all that God gave us, in essence we managed to do almost nothing.
@Gordon: yes we are but the price that we had to pay was huge and the benefits are small compared to the price. We destroyed our planet and we gained… an average of 30 years of life?! If we gained 200 years or at least those 30 years that we gained, but 30 useful years (for example – people to be young or healthy or rich all their life) then the price would have been correct.
But what we gained is 30 years of being old and overwhelmed by illness and worries, so did we actually gain very much for the price that we paid?!
Mankind has a great future. There has never been a better time to be alive. By and large we are wealthier, healthier, better fed, better educated and able to do more with our lives than ever before. Those who look to the pre-industrial past as a model would do well to remember how yes, we all ate organic food and lived in harmony with nature… and then we all died at 35.
Eu, you missed one: for Gordon, people (like in “socialism”) are more important than mankind (as a whole), its future or whether there is such a future.
Argentina is having the worst drought in 50 years, Cyprus buys water from Greece, Australia burns and drowns in the same time, it snows in the Arabian Peninsula and Thailand and so on; if you lived in Bucharest 20 years ago you would have found the summers pleasant compared with the ones we have now. Sorry there is no if…
There will be no droughts, there will be no floods. If (and it is a big if) and when ‘climate change’ ever becomes a real problem we will deal with it. Humanity is rather clever (men on the moon, etc.). Right now there are far too many real problems to deal with, the most of important of which is probably under-development in the Third World and all that goes with it (poverty, poor sanitation, poor diet etc.).
Let me be the black sheep and quote an optician friend: “a 20 W fluorescent bulb produces the same light as a 100 W incandescent bulb”. She says she has only Warm White eco friendly lights in her office and that she works there 8 hours a day without any issues. The main idea is to get Warm White lights. The rest is about nanometers I am not getting into details here. Further on, the rest is about politics and bananas used to have a post when one has no better ideas. Cheers.
Rather with low-energy lamps than droughts and floods, sorry, here I do not agree with the blog-owner. We must cut down greenhouse emissions
@Gordon: there, you see?! British were spying us when Ceausescu was President, now maybe D.R. of Congo or Central African Republic would want to spy us! : ) )
But how do you know what happened before 1989
Used to be a spy
dormitory = bedroom, sorry *
But how do you know what happened before 1989?! Were you staying at Intercontinental when the Revolution came?
About the light bulbs… you know what concerns me? These incandescent light bulbs that we have now produce a really enjoyable yellow light! I decorated my living room in beige and wooden brown and the light bulbs create an atmosphere even more cosy and enjoyable in my living room. I also decided to keep incandescent light bulbs in the dormitories, from the same reason.
However, on the hallway, bathroom, kitchen and closets I placed halogen bulbs and the white light is so unfriendly that in the first days the place seemed like the hospital coridors! In the mean time I got used to the light only because it’s rarely turned on throughout the day but I wouldn’t imagine spending my time under such an unfriendly light!
I hope they find some halogen bulbs with yellow light because otherwise I’m gonna light candles so I can see!