An Oxford climate change campaigner (why he is campaigning for climate change I do not know: maybe he wants it to be a bit warmer than it is now, just like it used to be when the Romans grew grapes in Scotland) wants the government to ban conventional light bulbs, so we're all forced to use new, so-called energy efficient ones.
Sounds like a good idea. But is it?
New bulbs cost about eight pounds each, compared to about fifty pence for the more traditional sort.
Now, while probably not being the world's greatest living economist, I do sort of know that the price of something is pretty much decided by the amount of resources used to make a product, and the amount of work that is needed to make it (leaving aside for one moment the profit rake-off taken by greedy capitalist exploiters destroying the planet).
By my calculation, that means that the energy efficient bulb uses about 16 times as much energy and resources as the conventional sort. I wonder how much more pollution that would produce?
However, the new bulbs last, on average, eight times as long and
use a quarter of the energy.
And they also generate much less heat than does a conventional bulb. So far, so good.
But while this maybe fine in the summer, during colder months, one would presumably need to replicate the heat provided from a bulb from another source. From a coal-fired power station, perhaps.
And then what happens when they go kaput? Old bulbs, I believe, are basically a bit of metal and a bit of glass — easy to dispose of. But, or so I'm told, in an 'energy-efficient' bulb there are all sorts of toxic chemicals and gases. So how much would they cost to scrap? Just think of all the energy and resources that would have to go in to creating special facilities to get rid of these.
Now, putting all those figures together, we come up with a calculation that looks like ... well, something that looks like a calculation if I'm not very much mistaken.
God knows what, mind. But maybe things are a bit more complicated than the bobble hat-wearing ones would have us believe.