It’s always fun to see how people create mass hysteria and profit from it. Global Warming is a textbook example.
Consider that, today, you can purchase a case of one hundred 75 watt light bulbs for .39 cents each.
Global Warming profiteers just passed a law mandating the new “high-efficiency” mercury-based light bulbs. They have written laws that will force the .39 cent incandescent light bulbs off the market within the next few years. Each of us will be forced to buy the new $3.00 light bulbs that aren’t as bright.
If you’ve ever seen a light bulb factory, you see the wonders of mass production. Bulbs are produced in totally automated, “lights-out” factories with almost no cost in labor.
As it is, manufacturers might be making a penny or two in profit per bulb. They will make a dollar or so with each of the new bulbs they sell. A small portion of that obscene profit has been pledged to the hired guns of the environmental movement to be sure the favored manufacturers may continue to be exempted from the rush to regulation.
II. It is interesting that mercury, which is needed to make the new bulbs work, is, by the miracles of junk science, not considered a “health hazard” when placed in the fragile glass tubes of the “enlightened light”. Mercury is, however, still worrisomely identified as a “health hazard” in dental fillings, thermometers (mercury thermometers are now illegal in many countries), and every other application.
One can imagine a housewife being arrested for taking her child’s temperature with a mercury thermometer in a room illuminated by the new mercury-based light bulbs. The law has made mercury contained in glass mandatory in one situation, and a felony in others. It’s hard to find the time in one’s life to pray enough for such people.
III. Environmentalists assigned to “recycling” already have plans in place to “recycle” the new mercury-based bulbs. Consumers will have to register each bulb at each purchase. An RFID chip will allow each and every light bulb to be tracked. A huge cadre of soon-to-be hired “Green Collar” workers will make sure that each and every light bulb is returned to some central location for recycling when it burns out, at an additional cost. Those involved will be “green collar” workers. They would prefer that we be in the dark about such things. Most of us are.
IV. Professional leftists, in their endless wailing about “the unfairness of the widening income gap” will completely ignore those who have become billionaires by manipulating the legislative and regulatory processes to impoverish people by making them buy dim, expensive lights.
