Flourescent Bulbs are Stupid

Today at lunch I read an article in MacLeans that really disturbed me. The critical fun-fact: if every household in America changed one light-bulb from regular to the new low-energy fluorescent bulb, the energy savings would be a bit less than the emissions of two medium sized coal-fired electricity generation plants. You might think that’s a lot, but consider: China is opening two new medium sized coal-fired electricity generation plants A WEEK.

The average house has, what, forty or fifty light-bulbs in it? That means that a complete overhaul of all American residences retrofitting every single bulb would cover the cost of this one source of growth in CO2 emissions on our planet for roughly one year.

At the end of that year, the lightbulb gambit would be played out. But they won’t stop building powerplants in China. So unless somebody stops them, we might as well forget changing bulbs, because it won’t make a lick of difference over the span of 20 years.

And then, for us Canadians, there’s the problem that the argument against regular bulbs doesn’t make sense for much of the year. The supposed problem with the bulbs is that they “waste” energy creating heat. How am I better off replacing a heat producing bulb with a cool bulb, and then increasing the use of my gas furnace to make up the difference? Normal bulbs are only “wasting” heat if I’m not using the heat. So as long as I don’t leave the lights on when I leave, my regular bulbs appear just as efficient for all the months where it is colder than room temperature, which is about nine of the months in Calgary. Even in summer, in my house we really only turn on the lights when the sun goes down, which is generally when our house cools to the point where it might need heating. Switching to fluorescent bulbs is therefore only nominally more efficient than my current energy consumption.

In a broader sense, the problem seems to me to be that we have been pitched the idea that we can combat global warming with energy efficient bulbs, and hanging lines for laundry, and hybrid cars when these technologies will not make any significant percentage difference when you consider that both the population and the average energy demand per person are growing on a global scale with no sign of reversing or even slowing. The efficiency myth tells us that if we operate more efficiently we can overcome the problem. Efficiency is not the problem. How we generate energy is the problem.

I believe that people are increasingly concerned about the environment. They are open to alternatives and they ask “what can I do?” The thing that made me cry in the car on the way back to work was the realization that all that good will is for nothing. We are being offered a solution to participate in but that solution is a lie.

Nothing you change about the way you live will save us from climate change. We are already in way too deep. The energy requirements for the next 10 billion people to join the population of this planet dwarf many times over everything efficiency can accomplish.

If there is a solution – IF there is a solution – then it is going to have to come from science. From finding a new way to collect and distribute energy. We should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this starting now and continuing every year until we find it. There is literally no cause more important that this. If we fail 80% of the world’s population is going to die and society as we understand it will end. Emission reduction targets for 2050 are a joke. They are a lie that is going to kill all of us if we don’t wake up right now.

Elizabeth May, David Suzuki, Al Gore. Please lead us somewhere useful for a change.