Say Anything Blog

Well, why not?  Congress has already decided what kind of light bulbs we can use, and Obama has expressed a desire to regulate where Americans set their thermostats (even as he cranks his personal thermostat in the Oval Office).  So why not regulate our lamps too?

It’s not like this is a free country or anything.

WASHINGTON—Aiming to keep the focus on climate change legislation, President Barack Obama put a plug in for administration efforts to make lamps and lighting equipment use less energy.

“I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and businesses,” the president said, standing alongside Energy Secretary Steven Chu at the White House.

Obama said the new efficiency standards he was announcing for lamps would result in substantial savings between 2012 and 2042, saving consumers up to $4 billion annually, conserving enough energy to power every U.S. home for 10 months, reducing emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars a year, and eliminating the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants.

The president also said he was speeding the delivery of $346 million in economic stimulus money to help improve energy efficiency in new and existing commercial buildings.

If there truly is billions of dollars to be saved in using different sorts of lamps, then why does the government need to mandate their use?  My guess is that the energy efficient lights probably cost significantly more, or have some other drawback that makes them not as market friendly as the lamps we’re already buying.  Because, again, if they’re as wonderful as Obama suggests they are - so wonderful that the government must mandate their use - then why aren’t we already buying them?

And the law of unintended consequences always applies.  Like when the government subsidizes the production of, and mandates the use of, ethanol as a way to make us more “energy independent” only to watch fuel prices soar as ethanol producers can’t keep up with demand followed by a spike in food prices as staple crops (and existing farm land) is diverted to biofuels.

When the government mucks about in the markets like this it rarely ends well.  Obama and his fellow big government liberals may think they’re brilliant enough to manage our economy for us, but they’re really not.  Nobody is.