Let's Regress to Progress

I recently spoke with some Europeans at a Boulder Climate Leaders meeting, and they provided an interesting perspective on the U.Sian lifestyle. They said that we are the only country they know of that still uses the inefficient "Edison bulb," or as we all know it, the incandescent. Here are a few facts about the Edison bulb vs. CFLs:

• CFLs are 4x more efficient and last up to 10x longer than Edison bulbs.
• A 22 watt CFL has about the same light output as a 100 watt incandescent. CFLs use 50 - 80% less energy than incandescents.
• The electricity used over the lifetime of a single Edison bulb costs 5x to 10x the original purchase price of the bulb itself.
• Although CFLs are more expensive initially, a single 18 watt CFL used in place of a 75 watt incandescent will save about 570 kWh over its lifetime. At 8 cents per kWh, that equates to a $45 savings.

Thanks for everything, Edison, but we've moved on.

These Europeans I was speaking with also told me that GE perpetrated the myth that CFLs release more mercury than incandescents because GE didn't want to have to switch from producing incandescents to CFLs. (And instead of progressing, they are now getting out of the light bulb industry all together.)

The people I was speaking with also pointed out that we are the only country that heats up 50 gallons of hot water in case we want some hot water. They all thought this was so funny. But not ha ha funny. And of course, we are also one of the only countries that has such huge houses that having a 50 gal. water tank sitting around isn't a concern.

We are also one of the only countries that heats an entire (huge) house when everyone is in the same room. They all simply had electric heaters in every room or even every couple rooms and just moved it to where they needed it. They said at dinner parties, they would put a heater under the table and the women (who presumably had bare legs and open-toed shoes) could lift up the table cloth and get warm from the heater. The men (who presumably had on pants and closed-toed shoes) would just keep the tablecloth in front of them. I thought this was such a poignant anecdote to illustrate how easy it is to have various people regulate their own temperatures and comfort levels without going to the absurd lengths that we do.

The same is true when attempting to cool our houses and offices. We make our office buildings freezing so that people can wear suits to work during summer. We surround our office buildings with asphalt and we fill them with machines that get left on all the time and with small heaters that we pretend are just giving us light. (Let's say you have a tiny office with only 10 incadescents. At 75 watts each, that's the equivalent of having a 750 watt heater running in your office all the time.)

In my experience, Europeans (and Kiwis and Argentines and Chileans and Bolivians) live how I think my grandparents lived. Their ecological footprint was miniscule compared to the average footprint now (and in fact, their feet were actually smaller, too). People who are seniors now were around when common sense was more common, and this is the ideal I think we should be striving to get back to. Our throw-away society has led us astray and it's time to revert back to what makes sense.