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While visiting relatives in Bangalore I notice that all their solar powered lamps – installed  a year or so ago in a surge of environmental consciousness – are all just ornaments on the garden path and provide no light any more. Any talk about them is somewhat embarassing and discouraged!!!

But at least in India the incandescent light bulb is not banned as it is in the environmentally alarmist EU.

As I have posted before I find the entire low energy lamp movement totally unconvincing and whenever I do the sums I find the environmental impact on reducing carbon footprint (which in any case is of little importance) to be quite insignificant.

Moreover, I find the low energy lamps cold and unattractive compared to the simple old-fashioned, incandescent light bulb.

Now comes confirmation that in fact the low energy lamps are not that environmentally friendly:

Consumer protection organisations have demanded a suspension of the EU ban on incandescent light bulbs, citing official tests that showed the new compact fluorescent lamps to be dangerous if broken.

The energy saving bulbs show mercury levels 20 times higher than regulations allow in the air surrounding them for up to five hours after they are broken, according to tests released Thursday by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA).

“If the industry can’t manage to offer safe bulbs, then the incandescent bulbs must remain on the market until autumn of 2011,” said Gerd Billen, the leader of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZVB).

I for one would be very happy to see their return.

Tags: Alarmism, global warming, Incandescent light bulb

This entry was posted on December 8, 2010 at 4:59 am and is filed under Alarmism, Business, Energy, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.