I have to confess to being a bit of a tree hugger. My bride and I try to squeeze every ounce of mileage out of a gallon of gas, our house is regulated by a temperature nazi thermostat, and we have CFLs installed almost everywhere. Which is to say there are more incandescents screwed in today than there were four years ago. It appears that we aren’t alone in our love - hate relationship with the little curly-cue wonders;

Fluorescent Bulbs Are Known to Zap Domestic Tranquillity

The current market share of CFL bulbs in the United States is about 6 percent, up from less than 1 percent before 2001. But that compares dismally with CFL adoption rates in other wealthy countries such as Japan (80 percent), Germany (50 percent) and the United Kingdom (20 percent). Australia has announced a phaseout of incandescent bulbs by 2009, and the Canadian province of Ontario decided last week to ban them by 2012.

The relatively glacial adoption rate of CFLs in most of the United States suggests continued stiff resistance on the home front, despite dramatically lower prices for the bulbs and impressive improvements in their quality.

“There is still a big hurdle in convincing Americans that lighting-purchase decisions make a big difference in individual electricity bills and collectively for the environment,” said Wendy Reed, director of the federal government’s Energy Star campaign, which labels products that save energy and has been working with retailers to market CFL bulbs.

“I have heard time and again that a husband goes out and puts the bulb into the house, thinking he is doing a good thing,” Reed said. “Then, the CFL bulb is changed back out by the women. It seems that women are much more concerned with how things look. We are the nesters.”

A key to the abiding grass-roots resistance to CFLs, Reed and other experts said, is indelible consumer memories of the hideous looks and poor quality of earlier generations of fluorescent lights. They were bulky. They were expensive, as much as $25 each. They had an annoying flicker and hum. They cast an icky, cold-white light that made people look pale, wrinkly and old.

“People remember them from 20 years ago and they are not going to forgive,” said Dave Shiller, vice president of new business development for MaxLite, a Fairfield, N.J., company that manufactures CFL bulbs.

Now, I’m all for saving energy, my Scottish forebears genetically guaranteed that. My problem is the color. Well, one of my problems is color. Incandescents give off that jaundiced yellow cast to everything that most of us grew up with. Imagine the glee I felt when they came out with those cool blue incandescents. It’s almost like daylight. Why can’t the good folks at GE bring a good thing to my life by putting out a CFL that gives off that glow?

“Attitudes don’t always reflect behavior, and that is what was most surprising to us,” said Tara Raddohl, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. “Customers may have in mind, yes, they want to support environmentally friendly products, but when they come to the shelf to buy, the data shows they are not always buying them.”

OK. I have a bad attitude. Who knew? Another issue I have is whether the CFL manufacturers really expect us to believe that their 23 watt marvels really put out the same light as a 100W incandescent. By my nearly senior opinion (I’m 57), they don’t. Not only that, I dare them to come and measure the light output of a one, two, or three year old bulb. I’ll allow that I might be going blind, and I’m going to blame that on these bloody dim CFLs.

So, let’s be honest. Boost the wattage, would ya please? Make the color a bit friendlier in a non-WalMart shopping experience kind of way. I’ll be dead soon enough. There’s no need to make my home look like a morgue.

Tags: CFL fluorescent environmentalism conservationism global warming climate crisis

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.