Ban the Bulb

Ethan Strimling, All Towns

Monday, February 11

Bill McKibben, the prominent climate change activist, once remarked, “global warming has a huge head start; the sprint to catch up is the story of our time.” Yet while a sprint is what’s needed, our public policy has been plodding at a snail’s pace.

Though much of my time lately has been taken up by my ongoing campaign for Congress here in Maine’s First District, I’m still working my hardest in the Maine Senate to create as great a momentum for progressive change as I can.

We all know that incandescent light bulbs are a waste of energy and contribute to the production of greenhouse gases, and the federal government has finally realized the need to phase them out of public use. But while replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs will immediately reduce energy consumption (a CFL bulb uses 75% less energy to produce the same amount of light as an incandescent bulb, and lasts up to five years), federal regulations will take the next 12 years to remove incandescent from the market. That’s simply too long to wait for a step that will immediately reduce greenhouse emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources.

That’s why I’m proposing Maine take the lead by phasing out all incandescent light bulbs by 2010.

I’m the first to admit that changing our bulbs over to CFLs is only a small step down a very long and rough path, but it’s one step that we can take sooner rather than later. There’s no sense in waiting eight, ten or twelve years to make progress against climate change when we only need two.
The legislation I’ve introduced has two main components:

• Replacing all incandescent light bulbs with more efficient and longer-lasting CFLs, and


• Establishing a $.25 deposit on CFLs to encourage proper recycling.

We’re in the midst of an environmental and energy crisis, and we need to be taking proactive steps to address it.

The average home is responsible for twice the greenhouse gas emissions than the average automobile, and lighting makes up about 20% of a household’s electrical bill. Switching to more efficient lighting is the easiest way to cut our energy bills and the quickest way to achieve lower emissions of greenhouse gases.

But it’s not enough.

As I’ve written before, we need to have higher CAFE standards and increased support for alternative energy development (like a program I’ve helped create here in Maine to support community wind power projects). We need to promote sustainable construction and encourage “green” building design. And we need to act fast.

When I get to Washington, I’ll bring with me a real sense of urgency about our climate crisis. The challenges facing us won’t just define our era, but may well define the world for decades, even centuries, to come.
If we don’t act, who will?