Lights Out! (follow up)

Yesterday's post (Lights Out!) about Europe's recent ban on the 100-watt incandescent lightbulb elicited a response from an actual European. Woo - Virtual Vellum's gone international!

Anyway, commenter Panta Rei linked to a blog by Dr. Peter Thornes at Ceolas.net. Dr. Thornes has clearly given some serious thought to the whole lightbulb issue and has some strong opinions about how, why and whether bans, taxes or any changes at all ought to be implemented. I haven't read all the posts yet (there are quite a few), but the gist of it appears to be that the EU is enacting some broad-swath legislation that makes life for Europeans harder without necessarily making it better in terms of the often-touted (by Obama, anyway) cost savings or overall effectiveness.

I wouldn't characterize myself as a lightbulb or energy-efficiency zealot on either side of the issue, but Dr. Thornes makes some very interesting points if you've ever been inclined to think that the whole Compact Flourescent vs. Incandescent debate is just a bunch of hot air designed to stir up public support to fix something that's not actually broken and divert attention away from more serious issues. Not that our government (or the EU, presumably) would ever do such a thing.

It's also nice to see that my skepticism about CF bulbs, based on my experience with them rather than any sort of scientific analysis, wasn't necessarily too far of.