Re: Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity; Energy-Savers a Turnoff for Wives

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Robert L Bass" <no-sales-spam@bassburglaralarms> wrote in message
news:d_GdnbcMSbYzWvzbnZ2dnUVZ_jqdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Seriously, though, there are new technologies
> > that make coal cleaner, but they aren't going to
> > forced on the industry for years, if not decades.
> > That's too late.
>
> And yet you insist that is preferable to doing
> anything on the demand side, such as using
> high-efficiency lighting.

I'm not quite sure how you twisted the words I wrote into that particular
contortion, but that's certainly NOT what I've been insisting.  I want the
government to step in to help fix the problem, because it's a situation
where commercial interests just won't do it for economic reasons.  Power
generation is so essential to the health of the nation, and in so many ways,
that it can't really be left to business to "get it right."  Instead of
mandating that everyone switch to CFL bulbs containing mercury, the Feds and
the country need to get serious about cleaning up smokestack emissions so no
matter what light bulbs we choose, they don't cause mercury to belch out at
the smokestack.  The CFL proponents confuse amelioration with solution.
That's dangerous.

>
> > Perhaps "cleaner coal" would be a more accurate
> > description.   As long as the true costs are masked
> > (the environmental damage from mining and
> > transport, as you've noted) the cost equations are
> > always going to be easily manipulated.
>
> I guess you must agree that scrubbers, which do
> nothing about mining and transportation, will not
> solve the problem.

"The problem" up until your last paragraph has been:  Is it a good idea to
fight mercury with mercury?   If you want to consider collateral issues
there are certainly lots of problems with using coal for power.  Yet we can
all be assured that it's going to continue for decades, so we had better get
to work, and quickly, to solve as many of those problems as we can as
directly as we can.  That's bound to produce better results, in the long
run, than 6% of the population using CFL bulbs in half the fixtures in their
homes hoping that small number of bulbs is somehow going to reduce huge
quantities of mercury from entering the air, the ground, the water and the
food chain.

--
Bobby G.