Even Gore must realize how weak his arguments have become if all he proposes is to get rid of light bulbs.

I mean seriously, the jig is up.

The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com

though I don't quite get the need to throw in the lightbulbs issue- kind of detracts from the whole thing- but impressive nonetheless. Very close to what the best and brightest economists have suggested on the policy side, although economists tend not to favor immediate moratoriums- but that's not a huge detail. I think David is right- how can you wage a presidential campaign on something this sensible? Never been done before to my knowledge.

J.S.

I teach environmental economics and blog at http://www.voicesofreason.info. I am a proud liberal, who stands on the shoulders of giants.

Everyone seems to be making fun of Gore's call for getting rid of incandescent lighting. Why?  According to http://tinyurl.com/4wqka one quarter of U.S. electricity use is for lighting.  If all lighting were incandescent, and was replaced by fluorescent that is 4x the lumens/watt, then we would reduce our electric use by 18%.  If that savings (366 TWh per year -- TWh = million megawatt hours) were selectively used to power down coal burning plants, the savings would be 0.363 gigatons of CO2 per year.  That's a little bit of an overestimate, since some of our lighting is already fluorescent, but it gives you an idea of the magnitude of what is being talked about.

Here's a more detailed source that says lighting uses 22% of US electricity:

National Lighting Inventory and Energy Consumption Estimate

There's no question that it's significant. In terms of total US energy consumption (not just electricity), lighting uses about 8 percent of the total.

The key issue: Start a long-term tax shift to reduce payroll taxes and increase taxes on CO2 emissions.Good for Gore!

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Thank you Laurence Aurbach for that reference.

On another item, "Start a long-term tax shift to reduce payroll taxes and increase taxes on CO2 emissions": People might want to dig up an old monograph by Redefining Progress called "Tax Waste, Not Work".

http://www.rprogress.org/newpubs/1997/twnw_execsum.html

What's not to like about efficient lighting?

If our current stock of inefficient lighting represents 22% of all electrical energy consumed in the US, and if the adoption of more efficient technologies with a 2 year payback could cut that bill by 50%, then we could cut carbon emmissions by 11% in this sector in 2 years.  The Energy Policy Act of 2005 incentives and many utilities are offering substantial rebates for investing in energy efficiency now.

Often a simple "Change a Light Bulb" investment saving electricity now will yeild dividends for the next 5 to 10 years reducing CO2 in defacto excess of international standards.  It puts a $50 dividend for every $5-10 investment back into the pockets of everyone that uses light bulbs or simulated daylight of any kind.  Best of all we don't have to agree with anyone except ourselves in order to do it.  

It only takes 18 seconds to change a light bulb.  See http://www.18seconds.org to see how much money, energy and carbon are being saved in your area.  

See http://www.sunwavelighting. net for "Changing a Light Bulb and BCH (Boulder Community Hospital.)  for a 2 minute look at lighting that is 50 to 75% more efficient on average than the lighting in the typical facility.  

See http://www.truths.treehugger.com for the Convenient Truths video contest finalists.  Of particular interest are "Changing a Light Bulb", and "Chicken Enlightens, Human Learns, World Improves".   If a hospital can do it and a chicken can teach a human how to do it, anyone can do it.

Go right ahead, keep using inefficient lighting.  The extra after-tax spendable money you willingly give to your energy supplier each month could have been yours.  Instead, it goes up in smoke.  

Australia and others have announced a ban on incandescent light bulbs by the year 2009.  Green on Ya, Mates.  

Steve Heising
http://www.sunwavelighting.net

Sunwave Spectrally Enhanced 25 Watt T8 Lamps 1-866-4Sunwave Most light - Least Energy - Win the energy reduction race and green up your bottom line.