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Six months ago, in my first post to this blog, I discussed the EU ban on 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs. The light bulb has always stood as a symbol for good ideas. But the incandescent bulb’s successor – the compact fluorescent (CFL) – will not enjoy such a reputation. Everyone knows that they are almost useless - particularly for older eyes. Yet they have been foisted on us all through regulation. What kind of a good idea needs to be enforced by EU diktat?
According to the Telegraph this week,
More than 200 million free energy-saving light bulbs have been sent to households over the last two years by energy suppliers. The mass mail-out was caused by gas and electricity suppliers trying to hit Government targets to reduce carbon emissions. However, Which?, the consumer watchdog has calculated that each household has ended paying £45 each through higher energy bills to fund the scheme, even though many consumers objected to being sent the bulbs. Many complained about having to go to the Post Office to collect what they thought was a parcel, only to find it was a bulb that did not even fit any of their lamps.
The scheme has been an expensive nuisance to so many people – as such schemes almost always are.
In celebration of ill-conceived, expensive and pointless folly, tonight is “Earth Hour”. Organised by the WWF, it asks people to turn off their lights and electricity in their homes for an hour starting 8.30pm this evening. According to the website even the Queen, and Gordon Brown will be turning off the lights to sit in cold, dark silence.
Last year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute had a better idea. “Human Achievement Hour”. This video tells the story.
These are the things that the poisonous green zealots want to deprive us of.
However the combined brains of the BBC had not considered what they obviously forgot in their school science lessons on electricity. When you turn an electrical appliance on or off it creates a surge, especially one that is a large and inductive load. When you multiply this surge millions of times it becomes such a huge current that the national grid would never be able to cope with it. So all the lights would end up permanently out, and all of those kidney dialyses machines would stop working as well.
Even for the scientific Luddites, one call to the electricity people would have put them straight. Did they do this? No! The electricity people had to contact them when they found out what they were going to do.