A bone industry doesn’t want thrown
Energy-saving incandescent light bulbs available now look and work like the bulbs we have been using for decades—but are 28–33 percent more efficient.
Usually when our elected leaders fight federal rules, they are going to the mat for their corporate benefactors. Yet we scratch our heads in wonder over who exactly has pushed them to take on this light bulb fight. Last week, the House GOP majority included in their must-pass funding legislation a rider to block funding for DOE’s enforcement of certain light bulb efficiency rules.
What is so strange about this latest action is not that the GOP is relying on a hollow argument about protecting “freedom of choice” for light bulbs (my colleague Liz Judge did a fantastic job debunking the assertion that the standards will force incandescent light bulbs off the market) but that industry is not behind the GOP’s attempt to block these regulations.
As detailed in this Politico story, companies including General Electric, Philips and Osram Sylvania have spent millions of dollars readying US plants to make new incandescent bulbs that meet the standards and are none too pleased that our leaders are attempting to unravel this effort.
Although the rider has no effect on the standards, which go into effect on Jan. 1, by blocking DOE from enforcing the standards, the GOP rider makes it possible for foreign companies to avoid punishment for illegally undercutting domestic manufacturers.
These energy efficiency standards for light bulbs are part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which was approved by President George W. Bush and will save Americans billions in utility bills each year.
Yet our conservative leaders and pundits have waxed poetic on the supposed merits of inefficient incandescent light bulbs, claiming the American people should have “freedom of choice” and that this really is about being pro-choice when it comes to light bulbs.
What they fail to mention is that incandescent light bulbs available today from the major manufacturers will meet the new standards. These bulbs look and work like the bulbs we have been using for decades, but are 28–33 percent more efficient. Energy efficient lighting products covered by the standard would save between 13 and 16 billion dollars every year at today’s average electricity cost. That is the equivalent of a tax cut of over $50 for every American each year.
Given these savings and the many lighting options that will remain available, it’s not surprising that a USA Today/Gallup poll earlier this year found that 61 percent of Americans think the 2007 standards are a good idea.
Yes, it makes absolutely no sense that some of our elected leaders are essentially fighting to steal money from our pockets, while claiming to protect a “freedom” that is not under any threat.
“The only people we are aware of who have opposed the bulb standards are some politicians and some conservative commentators,” Bill Wicker, spokesman for Senate ENR Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said.
Yes, it really doesn’t make sense.
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Opposition to Federal energy-saving programs, if part of a strategy, would likely concentrate on casting doubt on wisdom of a program, implication that a program in some way costs taxpayers more, or pretension that it inhibits freedom of choice, thus limiting "freedom."
Emotional responses to perceived threat appear to be a most popular method of engaging large numbers to act in concert.
Thus it becomes a strategy to sway potential voters to elect candidates with agendas counter to their interests would use to gain positions of control.
While agendas such as corporate personhood, if successful, gain corporate freedom from laws or regulations that limit profits, such agendas by nature are deleterious to humans and other biological species and ecosystems, would appear to be nonsensical.
While actions such as we have increasingly seen in federal and state legislation, judicial opinion, and executive action clearly support such agendas, and decisionmakers and scientific studies funded by specific corporate interests have been statistically shown to be skewed to benefit funders, appeal to emotion clogs the reasoning and cognition of voters.
in literate cultures with sophisticated marketing, what you see occurring is either the strategy of mindless emotional appeal, or sheer ignorance, which is unlikely to exist in partisan plans.
We can hypothesize that ignorance and shortsightedness may well be a factor in agenda creation, strategy, and decisionmaking; such a factor may exist most prominently in the choice and support of a particular individual - choosing ignorant or emotional candidates for mass appeal. Officeholders may well be less intelligent across the usage spectrum of the term, suggesting that the thinkers (such as the brilliant and unethical marketer Karl Rove) use every available tool to gain power, or that lessons have been learned from the popularity of demagogues and actors.
Some may remember the political humor of the TV character Archie Bunker, and saw how his opinions were taken at face value and attached due to the pseudorecognition as peer by a dangerously large segment of the US population. Thus we reap the rewards of emotional actors in media and in politics.
While nonsense might seem self-evident to some, to prisoners of a culture emotional response trumps reason and intuition.
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