[Consumer Alert] Raise your hand if you're a fan of CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs, for the uninitiated). The EPA propaganda, I mean, lowdown, on its EnergyStar.gov Website, goes like this:
If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars.But wait jest a minute there, partner. Texas Republican Congressman Ted Poe claims the bulbs are bad, bad, bad. They're filled with mercury and therefore shouldn't be thrown away in the trash but dropped off at a recycling center. Plus, there's quite a scary ritual that must be gone through if/when they break in your home.
And how many know that incandescent bulbs will be banned by January 2014 (per the Clean Energy Act of 2007)?
Here to shed light on the badness is Mr. Poe (whom, from the sounds of his outrage, I'm guessing has a soon-to-be-defunct light-bulb plant in his district). [Jerre Wroble]
