Not all light bulbs mind you, just the old-school ones or traditional ones that use far more electricity than their newer counterparts.
When these were first released they were a great deal more expensive than their incandescent counterparts and here we are all these years later, they still are.
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This of course is rooted in the fight against climate change and energy usage, which is something i have my own reservations about. While I have been somewhat of an environmentalist a long time before it was cool to do so, I do not believe the constant hype and doomsday scenario type things that are being described mostly by politicians.
This is being done by the Biden administration and it is meant to go into effect in August of this year. This will mean that it will not be possible to get an incandescent light bulb at a store. It will be ILLEGAL to sell a certain type of light bulb. It could have the effect of saving a lot of energy across the board, but much like that one liberal politician that told people who couldn't afford gas to "go and buy a Tesla," it kind of ignores the fact that not everyone just has tons of money sitting around in their bank accounts.
I cropped the above image but the price tags on them are pretty enormous for 2 light bulbs. They were nearly $7 for two bulbs. When I was in college and found myself for the first time in my life needing to buy my own light bulbs, I remember that incandescent bulbs were so inexpensive that I didn't even consider it a real cost. They still are considerably cheaper than their LED counterparts.
We can explain to the poorer consumers to the moon and back about how using LED bulbs costs a lot less in the long run but this doesn't change the fact that the initial purchase of said light bulbs could very well be beyond the financial capabilities of a lot of people.
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The cost savings behind using LED's is obvious. One only need look at the packaging and see that a 9 watt LED produces as much light as a 100 watt incandescent to figure this situation out very quickly. This isn't the point though nor is it the reason why I consider this Biden ruling (which will almost certainly be overturned as soon as a conservative gets into office) to be very dumb. I personally do not like the government, or any other powerful body, telling me what I MUST DO.
This also seems like political grandstanding because anyone who speaks out against it will be labeled as a "climate denier" or whatever the terminology it is that they use is.
Then there is the question of dimming. I know that dimming devices have kind of gone out of fashion in the last few decades, but there was a time when they were all the rage. Most LED lights have great difficulty with this and attempting to use them anyway can actually result in a strobing effect or even worse, the destruction of the $5 light bulb. I have destroyed several light bulbs using dimmer switches that were just part of the apartment, they weren't there by my own choice, and in order to prevent further destruction of the light bulbs, I had to have an electrician come by and change out the switches.
This law is stupid because it doesn't take things like this into effect either. A poor family that is already struggling financially is now going to find themselves in a position where they have to hire an electrician to come and rewire their house? Sure... that isn't going to happen.
Maybe I am crazy here, but I appreciate freedom even if that freedom isn't exactly the best choice... even if it isn't the best choice for me I am the only person that gets to be me and ultimately I should be able to live my life the way I want to see fit.
When the Biden administration started talking about banning gas stoves I thought that was dumb. I think the banning of incandescent light bulbs is just as dumb. It just shows more and more how disconnected the rich and powerful politicians are from the common man and have no idea what it is like to shop for a light bulb at all, let alone to be staring at the light bulb section and have to make a choice between getting food, or being able to have lights on at home.
A group of free market consumer groups wrote a letter to the Department of Energy and it presented a bunch of statistics about how this ruling is going to overwhelmingly affect the poor, who have adopted the use of much more expensive LED's at a significanly lower rate than those making 100,000 dollars a year or more. In it they said " the climate benefits of energy efficiency rules are "speculative, assumption-driven, and prone to bias in the hands of agencies with a regulatory agenda.""
I completely agree with that statement but I feel the financial aspects of it are even more important. A poor man seeks out a cheaper product even if said product is of far lessor quality. Taking away that option by making it illegal doesn't solve the problem, it just makes the poor man more desperate.
If this does in fact go forward I can all but guarantee that there will be some sort of program enacted to help the poor "for free." There's no such thing as free. The cost of this transition will simply be transferred to other people and well, that's Socialism with extra steps.
