What Are Authoritarian Governments Good For? Negative Examples

Fascinating article in today's Wall Street Journal about China's efforts to clean up the air in time for the Olympics. They're not making much progress despite some pretty drastic measures. That has some environmentalists worried. Why? Well ...

Scientists from around the world are studying the antipollution efforts to see what, if anything, succeeds -- and what the costs are. These conclusions could affect policies in countries like India whose fast-growing economies are following similar patterns of industrialization and car ownership. Though countries including the U.S. and Japan have used similar tactics to curb pollution, scientists say the speed and sheer extent of China's changes make it an ideal laboratory to measure what works.

***

China's authoritarian government can compel companies and citizens to comply with regulations more easily than other countries can. The government's antipollution measures have disrupted workday commutes for hundreds of thousands of residents, and caused tens of thousands of workers to go on forced holiday, with reduced pay.

So if Beijing can't succeed -- even in the short term -- the current experiment could bode ill for the ability of other industrializing countries to curb pollution. "If China can't control pollution, a country like India can't either," says Shaw Chen Liu, director of the Research Center for Environmental Changes at Academia Sinica, a Taiwanese institute that helped China lay out plans to improve air quality for the Games.

Good to know that climate change types are taking their cues from Communist China. Thank goodness, the message that's coming out of China is that it's methods don't work.

Bald Eagle? Tastes Like Chicken ...

Animal conservationist Gary Paul Nabhan has come up with a novel way of saving endangered species -- slather them with barbecue sauce:

There are more than 1,000 plants and animals once commonly eaten in the United States that are threatened or virtually extinct, Nabhan says, and saving them means creating market demand for flavors that have fallen off American dinner plates. His combination cookbook and history, Renewing America's Food Traditions: Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods, documents many of these once-common foods that reflect our culinary heritage. It's also a call-to-action on how to recover foods at risk before they go the way of the passenger pigeon.
***
"If we create local market demand for these — if we take these place-based heritage foods and make them the pride of our fairs and festivals and thanksgivings and picnics again — they will come back from the brink of extinction," Nabhan said in a conversation with Andrea Seabrook.

Now there's some environmentalism I can get behind. Frankly I've been dying to try me some fillet of panda ...

Read the whole story here (on NPR, no less).

Hat Tip: Lene Johansen.

Heck, I Didn't Even Know I Was Aiding the Environment

Here's a bit of green technology we can all support. A Chinese guy built a solar water heater using empty beer bottles.

... And That's Why It's "Harrison" Not Harry

Actor Harrison Ford, 65, recently invited along a film crew to watch as he had his chest waxed. Did he do it for a movie part? Did he lose a big time bet? Is his girlfriend Calista Flockhart really into smooth-chested guys? No, no, no. He did it for -- wait for it -- the environment:

Harrison invited Access Hollywood and our guest correspondent Mel B exclusively along as he embarked on a personal project to promote going green.

And just how did Harrison, who is the vice chair of the global environment group Conservation International, want to get his message across?

By waxing his chest, of course.

In an effort to showcase the pain involved in deforestation, Harrison willingly subject himself to the painful process of stripping his chest of all its follicles.

Having worked with CI for 15 years, it was Harrison’s hope that his trip to the salon might just shock people into thinking “green.”

You know it was really going to be hard enough to enjoy Indiana Jones and the Early Bird Special knowing that the two-fisted hero on screen is in reality an AARP member more likely to be driving 45 mph in the passing lane than escaping death in some exotic locale. Did he really have to make it even harder by revealing himself to be just another empty-headed Hollywood douchebag?

Be Sure to Turn Off Those Lights

for Earth Hour tonight at 8:00. Join Google and major cities across the world in turning out your lights for one whole hour as part of a big, global Free Tibet bumper sticker; raising awareness for the fight against climate change, energy usage, maybe the environment, could be dolphins and whales...Who the fuck knows. We can rule out poverty, hunger, class disparities -- you know all those things that oil, capitalism and increased human development have helped combat.

New Studies Suggest that Biofuels Create Much More Carbon Than Oil/Gas

While Congress keeps increasing its biofuel mandates, scientific evidence is emerging that proports that biofuels are an environmental disaster and make oil look as innocuous as solar panels in comparison.

From the WSJ today:

A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, a type of biofuel pushed heavily in the U.S., will nearly double the output of greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them by about one-fifth by some estimates. A separate paper in Science concludes that clearing native habitats to grow crops for biofuel generally will lead to more carbon emissions.

Some earlier studies didn't account for one hard-to-measure factor: the decision by farmers world-wide to convert forest and grasslands to grow feedstock for the new biofuels.

Such land-use changes can have big and unintended consequences, such as food shortages and reduced biodiversity. For example, when forests or grasslands are converted for agricultural use, it leads to a large, quick release of carbon when the existing plant life is destroyed and the soil is tilled. Even if biofuels are grown on cropland previously used to grow food, farmers tend to then clear other forests and grasslands and grow the food elsewhere.

"Even if we're dramatically wrong, it's hard to get to a result that says you get a benefit over 50 years," said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University and a co-author of the paper on corn-based ethanol.

Way to go Congress for mandating a worse ecological disaster to replace the optional one. This issue alone makes me fervently support a national primary so that corn-growing Iowa loses its disproportional influence on US policy.

27 Year Old Hostess at a Titty Bar Smarter Than Democratic Presidential Candidates

Yucca Mountains, "Nevada's ethanol":

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Tori, a 37-year-old Las Vegas stripper, is an unlikely person to set national energy policy.

As a voter in Nevada's Jan. 19 Democratic presidential caucuses, that's just what she'll help to do when she chooses which candidate to support. The most important issue for her is the U.S. Department of Energy's plan to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, an extinct volcano about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Senator Hillary Clinton of New York ``says she is against it,'' says Tori, who declines to give her last name, citing her day job working with burn victims at a dermatology clinic. ``But before she has my vote, I want to know if she means it.''[...]

Obama, Clinton and Edwards all oppose using Yucca Mountain as a waste depository, though in 2000, Edwards voted the other way. Obama, whose state has the largest nuclear-energy network in the country and the eighth-largest in the world, has said nuclear power should remain an option for the U.S.

Clinton told an environmental magazine last August that she is ``agnostic'' about nuclear energy, while Edwards flatly opposes its expansion.

Back at the Las Vegas gentlemen's club where Tori works, her colleagues also aren't unanimous on the issue. Suzanne Nakata, a 27-year-old waitress who doesn't disrobe because she ``might run for office one day,'' says Nevadans need to reconsider their opposition to Yucca Mountain if they want to reduce America's greenhouse-gas emissions.

``Honestly, nuclear waste really does have to go somewhere,'' the registered Democrat says, ``but Nevadans haven't accepted that.''

Full story -- ambitiously titled "Las Vegas Strippers may Influence Global Nuclear-Waste Policy" -- here. Directions to Baltimore strippers who may influence the waste out of my radioactive rod tonight, here.

Thanks to Sean Higgins for the link -- who, fwiw, covers stripper-influenced special interest politics better than anyone else I know.

Oil for Blood

Or is it Blood for Oil? Either way, the defintion that that gives meaning to the signs and chants.

Elitist Bullshit At Its Finest

An Indian automotive company has developed a car that not only gets 50 miles per gallon, but sells for roughly $2500 new. Goddamn, this is great news for both the Indian people and the environment, right? Well, maybe not:

While the price has created a buzz, critics say the Nano could lead to possibly millions more automobiles hitting already clogged Indian roads, adding to mounting air and noise pollution problems. Others have said Tata will have to sacrifice quality and safety standards to meet the target price.

[...]

Chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize, said last month that "I am having nightmares" about the prospect of the low-cost car.

If you oppose Indians driving a compact car that gets fifty miles to the gallon, I guess that means you oppose Indians driving anything at all. After all, what would be the better option? I guess you think the current state of India is preferable to one in which the common person or family can afford a car, right?

I wonder how Dr. Pachauri gets around as a U.N. scientist. Does he walk on water to get to Belgium? Assuming he obeys the laws of physics and takes an airplane (or even a boat), why does he think he deserves fast and efficient transportation while the common Indian shouldn't even have a fuel-efficient compact car?

I suppose that overcrowding on the roads could be a concern. But if millions of Indians are suddenly able to afford this car, then wouldn't that suggest that there's a market for new roads also? I guess not if you operate under the meta-context that requires that the government and only the government to provide roads.

Dr. Pachauri should be ashamed of himself for spewing this garbage. That cushy U.N. job must really be getting to his head.

Oily is Never a Good Look...

Oh hey...here I am. I heard Rob was looking for me. I recently got a new job blogging/doing creative shit for a failing fashion dot com, so I've been avoiding reality and living in that world for the past week or so. But I'm back with more environmental/not quite libertarian (boohoo) stuff for you guys.

So I had a first hand experience with the oil spill on Sunday. I headed down to the beach with a friend. When we arrived on the sand we went to take our shoes off when these two girls stopped us and said, "um, you guys probably shouldn't do that, there is oil and grossness everywhere." We couldn't see the oil and the water looked fairly blue, but we put our shoes back on and walked towards the ocean. When we got back up to the street I looked down at my feet and there was what looked to be tar stuck all over my white Converse. I bent down and touched it, and when I brought it up to my nose, I knew immediately what it was. Black sand, saturated with oil. Totally sad, disgusting, and awful. Hours later I could still smell it on my fingertips. Completley ruined my sneakers too.

My secret hate-sex partner, Gavin Newsom, is being a real coconut scented douchebag about the whole thing. Go figure.

Which leads me to my next point: If you live in or around SF, there is a training TONIGHT on how you wonderful civilians can help clean up the bay. Hey, personal responsibility...

I'd be there, but you know, Gossip Girl is on.

Does A Big Carbon Footprint Imply A Big Carbon Penis?

The topic of this article from Techworld.com is actually the carbon footprint of Google and other IT companies. But I was impressed by something else:

The number of servers used by Google and the rate at which they grow almost beggars belief. In March 2001, Google had around 8,000 servers.

In a January, 2005, CBS 60 Minutes TV programme, Google said it had over 100,000 servers on which it stores a cached version of every page it knows about on the Internet.

The New York Times article reckoned the total had grown to 100,000 servers in 2003 and 450,000 spread across 25 global datacentres in June 2006.

Now it is one year later and we can reasonably suppose that the total has passed half a million and that they are spread across 40 to 60 datacentres, meaning an average of over 8,000 servers per datacentre. Once the five new US datacentres are built that would mean an additional 40,000 servers taking the server total to 550,000, unless older datacentres are retired.

Emphasis mine. British spelling not mine.

Cool. The Internet is huge and only growing larger. Personally, I think amount of easily accessible information spread all over the world is worth the carbon emissions involved in sustaining it. That's not to diminish Google's efforts to reduce its emissions, of course, as long as they are voluntary.

From Sunny San Francisco...

"I looked out and saw the mountain engulfed in flames with a trail at least three miles long coming down"

As the West Coast contributor to TtP, I thought I should say something about what is going on over here. It is intense and tragic and sad and people are pretty much, totally freaking out (as they should). Most people up here in San Francisco have friends and family down in Southern California that they are terribly worried about. Though the majority of residents are being evacuated and moved to safety, it is still quite horrible and unfair that this should have to happen to anyone.

We can only hope, expect, and demand that this disaster will not mirror ones of the past. And though it is easy to say, "well, the people in Southern California are rich and white so of course they will not suffer as much as those whose lives were destroyed by Katrina", the truth is...with the way our government is today...you can't really count on anything.

And also, like Leonardo said, it's fucking HOT everywhere. So in case you had any doubts about what our colossal footprint is doing to our ecosystem, look no further than the sweat beads on your forehead and the eye witness news coming straight from LA, glowing on your ostentatious big screen television.

A380 Delievered

Despite being nearly 2 years late and too large for most airports, the first Airbus A380 has been delivered to Singapore Airlines, the launch customer.

Airbus has officially handed over the first A380 to Singapore Airlines in a ceremony held at its Delivery Centre Toulouse, France in the presence of over 500 guests. The aircraft was officially handed over to Chew Choon Seng, Chief Executive Office (CEO) of Singapore Airlines by Airbus President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Enders in presence of Chief Executive Officer Rolls-Royce Sir John Rose. Singapore Airlines will be the first to fly the A380 on regular scheduled service.

[...]

Singapore's A380 is powered by four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, which generate 72,000 lbs thrust each. They greatly contribute to the A380’s environmental friendliness. As a result the A380 is setting new environmental benchmarks in air transport. The A380 has an unmatched fuel efficiency of less than three litres per passenger per 100 kilometres.

I'm always encouraged to see the market answering the call for more environmentally friendly technology. In a time when most media reporting on the environment consists basically of "we're all screwed; then ocean is about to swallow us whole, so let's become cave men again," this kind of advance is encouraging.

It's probably going to take technological advances like the A380 and the upcoming Boeing 787 to offset the government officials flying around the world in private jets telling you and me to lessen our carbon footprints.

A Hummer Gets Smashed

Northwest DC was riled by the debate caused by a Hummer being trashed in AU Park.

Here is the Wa Post article.

And here is the Wa Post's Warren Brown getting pissed off, as he loves those big SUV's.

Look at Me! Look at Me!

British designer Anya Hindmarch has developed reusable bags with "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" printed on them. And they're selling like hotcakes. Currently, some of these things are selling for well over $100 on eBay.

Jesus, that episode of South Park is coming true. Yes, it's safe to say that reusing one bag is more environmentally friendly than throwing away a plastic bag after each use. Fine. But it's a small step. Nobody toting a "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" bag is single-handedly saving the universe. So is this level of self-congratulation really appropriate?

Also, I'd be willing to bet that many (not all) people carrying these bags would support government measures to force people to be more environmentally friendly. Yes, I'm generalizing, but if this is true, shouldn't something simple like reusing a bag be a responsibility for these folks, rather than some heroic task that calls for announcing it to the world?

So why not get a self-congratulatory t-shirt, hat or colored arm band for every little environmentally friendly act? I don't have a driver's license for Japan, so I haven't driven in three weeks, but nobody's making any special accessories for me that will help me obtain your praise.

Other "off the top of my head" ideas for self-congratulatory phrases to wear on your clothing or accessories:

* I took a shower today
* It's been nearly 2 hours since I snorted a line
* I used a condom with my hooker last night

Feel free to comment your own ideas.

Dingell's First Good Proposal: A Carbon Tax. Too Bad He Wants It to Fail

On Friday Rep. John Dingell of Michigan announced that he plans to introduce carbon tax legislation in the House. Dingell is reliably anti-market, so why is he proposing a market solution to environmental issues?

The answer is that he is trying to protect the moribund Detroit auto industry that he represents and is thus opposed to the pending House energy bill that proposes raising CAFE standards dramatically. So his strategy was to introduce legislation that would "shock" the American public and galvanize them to oppose raising the CAFE standards. The NYT headline reads: "Counting on Failure, Energy Chairman Floats Carbon Tax"

Despite his bad and cynical reasons, for once Dingell is right. As I have posted earlier, the best, least coercive (I am channelling Hayek now) means of government achieving a goal is the best. Ergo incandescent bulbs should not be banned and sports cars should not be banned in favor of Priuses that drive 200 miles a day to a from work and fluorescent lights that could be kept on when no one is home.

Dingell might not agree with me, but I think that a tax on actual usage of energy is a far superior solution than outlawing sports cars, SUV's and incandescent bulbs. Reason's Ron Bailey endorsed a carbon tax here.

Allsworth M. Gore

In an AP article about his son's arrest (here via FoxNews), Al Gore states "We are going to leave it as a private matter."

I'm going to leave my choice of which type of light bulb I use and how I set my thermostat as private matters also. I'm glad Al Gore understands my privacy, too.

Oh wait.

Explanation of post title here.

The Idiocy of Raising CAFE Standards and Giving Tax Breaks to Hybrids

Congress and the media have lately gone wild over global warming. Their proposals, however, make no sense even if you agree with their goals.

The reason is that Congress has been focused on the wrong thing to help reduce emissions: the vehicle that one drives versus how much one actually drives. Congress has showered big tax breaks to drivers of hybrids and is proposing dramatically increasing the average mileage of cars sold in the US.

Congress gave tax deductions to hybrid drivers of up to $3,150 for a hybrid owner. This means that a commuter who drives 200 miles a day to work gets rewarded with a big tax deduction, while someone who takes public transit, walks to work, bikes or works at home gets nothing and de facto subsidizes the long-mileage commuter.

The proposed CAFE standards could basically make illegal high-performance cars. But should the Metro commuting worker be disallowed his weekend zoom while his Prius driving co-workers guzzle gas all week long on their 200 mile daily commute from Loudon County into DC, and they get a big federal tax break to boot?

This exemplifies the worst tendency of Congress: it manipulates the tax code to pick winners and losers. Even worse, it rarely gets it right.

More Friday Links

In an effort to help sea turtles and hurt poor, inner-city residents, whom are already forced to buy costly groceries; certain Maryland cities are aiming to follow San Francisco and ban plastic bags.

In other news, in an effort to help poor, inner-city residents, and hurt sea turtles and the environment; the state of Maryland has donated $5mil of taxpayer's monies to a fund that will help residents keep their air conditioners running longer throughout the summer.

Poor inner city residents are said to be indifferent as they have more pressing concerns...i.e, dodging bullets on a nightly basis.

This quote from the guy who invented Microsoft Word, reminded me of Trump and his inability to keep his casino properties out of the red.

My friends, if you can’t figure out how to make money from people who only play games with a built-in house edge, you may as well give up on the casino business and close your doors.

He was remarking on the fact that certain high rollers, including him, had been 86ed from Harrah's properties (including Caesars, which was recently bought by Harrahs), not because he was counting cards, or cheating; but rather because he had been too lucky at video poker. Read his whole post, it's pretty interesting.

Why Doesn't Marc Fisher Mind His Own Business?

"Why doesn't D.C. have a bottle bill?" asks the Washington Post's Marc Fisher. He then gives an excellent - and short - history of the movement to make small businesses collect deposits on cans and bottles to force people to recycle.

The 1987 D.C. campaign on the bottle bill was one of the most fascinating and revealing I've ever covered. At the start of the campaign, polls showed 70 percent support in the city for putting deposits on bottles. But the campaign split the city by race, and in the final tally, whites supported the bill overwhelmingly and blacks opposed it equally powerfully....The anti-bottle bill appeal was part economic--a deposit raises prices, which inner-city blacks could least afford--but was also cleverly and cynically racial--the idea was that the bottle bill somehow was a sign of The Plan, the long-feared white effort to take back control of the District.

Fisher wonders, "would a bottle bill pass today, with a considerably changed racial dynamic and population in the city?" He doesn't venture to guess, but I would say it would most likely pass. As would almost any law mandating anything.

I was subjected to such a law in Michigan, where it was a lot like forced savings. I would save my beer cans and turn them in when I was broke to get some money for beer. Homeless people would collect cans to get money for beer as well, reducing litter and getting people drunker. It was win win. Except, of course, for the business owners forced to collect the tax - oops, I mean deposit - and all those stinky cans.

I've Become a Vegetarian

if the tax man asks.

Citing the need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is calling on congressional leaders to give vegetarians a tax break. In a letter sent Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), PETA President Ingrid Newkirk stated, “[V]egetarians are responsible for far fewer greenhouse-gas emissions and other kinds of environmental degradation than meat-eaters.”

The letter added that vegetarians should receive a tax break “just as people who purchase a hybrid vehicle enjoy a tax break.”

Asked how the government would certify that taxpayers are vegetarian, PETA spokesman Matt Prescott said, “I imagine that a system could be adopted whereby taxpayers could show receipts for food purchases and/or sign an affidavit attesting … that they are vegetarian. If Congress is seriously interested about rewarding people for reducing their carbon emissions, then it could develop a system to verify that people are vegetarian.”

More here.

I have a similar idea, and I hope PETA supporters and environmentalists are the first to sign up. The federal government should give $10,000 to the family of every person who kills themselves to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I call it, "Save the Earth, Drop Dead." But seriously, the government shouldn't be using the tax code for social engineering purposes. In a free society, the people should influence the government, the government shouldn't influence the people.

Incandescent Bulb Ban Seems Inevitable, Start Hoarding Now

When environmental activists and industry are in bed together on an issue two truisms generally apply: coercive legislation will result and consumers will be screwed by fewer choices and higher prices. Sadly, this is happening to my lonely crusade to preserve a person's right to use incandescent light bulbs. From the WSJ [subscription only]:

Manufacturers and environmentalists are hammering out a nationwide energy-saving lighting standard that, if enacted by Congress, would effectively phase out the common household light bulb in about 10 years. That in turn could produce major cuts in the nation's electricity costs and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new standard is expected to compel a huge shift by American consumers and businesses away from incandescent bulbs to more efficient -- but also more expensive -- fluorescent models, by requiring more light per energy unit than is yielded by most incandescents in use. The winner, at least in the near term, likely would be the compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL [and, of course, CFL manufacturers].

I posted on this subject two months ago, as did Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason in more detail.

A carbon tax is a superior way to tackle energy use as it allows consumer choice (thereby granting Hayek a rest from rolling in his grave) and charges for usage versus vehicle of usage. If I only want one hour per night of a real light bulb as I read in bed why could I not have this option while John Edwards could light his 28,000 square foot mansion 24/7 with CFL's?

Earth Friendly Big Brother

Charles More writing in the Spectator's Notes:

A friend of mine who lives in a north London street where there have recently been several burglaries was alarmed by a noise outside his house at two in the morning. Looking out, he saw men in black woolly hats creeping round near his dustbins, shining torches. He was about to ring the police when one of the men turned round, and revealed a sign on his back announcing that he was from the council’s refuse collection department. The men were checking for infractions of the new rules about sorting your rubbish into different, environmentally friendly bins. Truly, the price of greenery is eternal vigilance.

Geesh. Full diary entry here. Via Jay Nordlinger's NRO column here.

The Grand Canyon Would be So Much Better with a Roller Coaster

In the environmentalist's opinion, nature is supposed to be enjoyed. By looking at pictures of it in a book. Hundreds of miles away from it. Preferably while you're sipping an expensive latte and complaining about how Republicans are ruining the world. In their view, people should not enjoy nature by actually going there and becoming one with it, like looking at it, walking through it, driving your snowmobile through it, etc. So I for one can't wait until there's a Starbucks and a Wal-Mart right in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Hopefully in place of that creepy ghost town that the Brady's went to in Episodes 50, 51, and 52. You know, those episodes of The Brady Bunch where you wished they would all die. OK, that was all of them. But still, it would have been sweet in that instance. Trapped in a jail cell, with nobody around for miles. Slowly starving to death. Urinating on themselves. Forced to cannibalism. Can't you just hear Jan's irritating voice, "why can't we eat Marcia. It's not fair that no one wants to eat Marcia." Fucking bitch. You deserve to be raped and beat to death by Zaccariah Brown, the grizzled prospector who suspected the Brady's came to jump his new gold claim. I would have given him a Nobel Peace Prize for breaking Jan in two. Anyway, this is what got my panties in a bunch today:

Visitors who have marveled at the Grand Canyon's vistas will now have a dizzying new option: a glass-bottom observation deck allowing them to gaze into the chasm beneath their feet.

The Skywalk, which will be unveiled Tuesday, is being touted as an engineering marvel. The glass-and-steel horseshoe extends 70 feet beyond the canyon's edge with no visible supports above or below.

Visitors will be able to see 4,000 feet straight down to the canyon floor, a vantage point more than twice as high as the world's tallest buildings.
[...]
The Skywalk has sparked debate on and off the reservation. Many Hualapai (pronounced WALL-uh-pie) worry about disturbing nearby burial sites, and environmentalists have accused the tribe of transforming the majestic canyon into a tourist trap.

Bye-Bye Beloved Light Bulb

The incandescent bulb, which emits a warm, natural and pleasing light, might soon be only a memory, as environmentalists seek to ban the beloved bulbs entirely. Their replacement would be fluorescent lights which, as you know, give one's home the atmospheric feel of a supermarket and make everyone look ugly.

The idea of banning the incandescent bulb has gained significant traction lately. Both the Australian and Canadian governments are seeking to ban the bulbs over the next few years. Now US producers of florescent lighting have joined up with environmentalists to force a ban in the US:

A coalition of industrialists, environmentalists and energy specialists is banding together to try to eliminate the incandescent light bulb in about 10 years.

In an agreement to be announced Wednesday, the coalition members, including Philips Lighting, the largest manufacturer; the Natural Resources Defense Council; and two efficiency organizations, are pledging to press for efficiency standards at the local, state and federal levels.

The article notes that only 9% of electricity is consumed by incandescent bulbs and therefore a switch to fluorescent would make only a tiny dent in overall energy consumption. Yet it would have a huge effect on people and the quality of their environs. Why not raise the cost of electricity and allow those who favor incandescent bulbs to pay more for using them? I personally would lose my mind if I had to live in a fluorescently-lit house and would start smuggling incandescents from China.

Federal License to Fish

The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection is proposing to license saltwater fishermen. Currently the state is one of seven (out of 21 coastal states) that does not require a license to fish in saltwater. Under the new plan, saltwater anglers would have to pay $15 for an annual license or $25 for an all-water license. Freshwater anglers already have to pay $20 per year.

The DEP cites two reasons for the plan. One is that revenue from the freshwater licenses is down and so new fees are needed to pay for conservation and education programs. CT, like other states, uses the fee money from fishing licenses -- or at least some of it -- to mitigate the tragedy of the commons with creel limits, to teach people how to ice-fish without falling through, and so forth. While it's mildly irritating that I will now have to buy a license, I agree the cost is not onerous (fishing is a ridiculously cheap sport) and I support the pay-for-use structure of fishing and hunting licenses. I only wish all government services were likewise constructed.

The second reason for the plan: in January, President Bush signed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006, which calls for a national registry of recreational fishermen by 2011. The Act already governs commercial fishing operations. Under section 401(g), the new Act calls for a federal list of all recreational, Sunday-afternoon anglers and their boats.

The Act exempts those anglers already registered under state programs from directly registering with the feds, and though there is no fee for a federal license until 2011, the Connecticut DEP is apparently trying to establish their registry before the federal one comes into being, thereby keeping the fee money in-state. Meanwhile the feds will use data from the state registries to compile their own list.

I'm willing to bet hard cash there will be federal fees after 2011 which will be passed along to the states, resulting in much higher state licenses. Indeed, there is no aspect of our lives too minor to require federal regulation. Thanks small-government conservatives!