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Seeing the Light
bulb
I want to take you back to the end of 2013, back to New Year’s Eve, when people were going nuts about the death of the incandescent light bulb.
    It was the government limiting our choice, forcing their will on the consumer, destroying something wholly American as the bulb made by Thomas Edison.
    Thanks Obama.
    There was so much wrong with the outrage over the light bulb ‘ban,’ the biggest being that there was even a ban - the new rules, put in place during the George W. Bush Administration, called for incandescent bulbs to become 25 percent more efficient, which they did. Sixty-watt bulbs became 43-watt bulbs after manufacturers added halogen gas.
    The bulbs ballooned in price, from 25 cents to $1.25, but they were still there, and still are.
    Can you remember all that outrage?
    Here we are, 5.5 years later, and the ‘ban’ did greatly reduce the use of the incandescent bulb, as well as the fluorescent bulb, which kind of took the top spot initially afterwards.
    But 5.5 years in, LED prices have dropped so much that they have taken over as the defacto bulb for many. For me, with the exception of specialty bulbs in my oven and fridge, there are no incandescent bulbs in my house. In fact, the only compact fluorescents are ones I got for free from a energy efficiency program the city was a part of, or came with the light fixture, and once they shine for their last time, they will be recycled and replaced by an LED.
    What got me about the whole debate over light bulbs back then, and what gets me about those who fight conservation, or efficiency programs now is how that often runs counter to what had been long-held as one of the ideals of America - that we are innovators who will not be run over by the horses of progress. We invented the light bulb to replace the lamp, the horse is replaced by the automobile. We defy gravity for flight and reached the heavens themselves.
    This country has been all about throwing away the technology of the past, and embracing the new of the future. We led the world, why would we not want to continue to push them in the 21st century?
    And leading is also being more efficient than the past. Sometimes we jump at those opportunities, sometimes we need to be pushed. This program was more like a nudge, but for some, they claimed it was like having a gun held to their head, and threatened the liberty of the nation.

    Sometimes we need to just look at things and ask ourselves ‘if the other side proposed this, would we be outraged?’