The Age of Unenlightment
2010-07-11 · Guest: Doug Bandow (Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute) · 42:28
Government mandate phasing out incandescent light bulbs
Bob Zadek and guest Doug Bandow discuss the government mandate to phase out incandescent light bulbs in favor of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). They explore the implications for personal liberty, the environmental hazards of mercury in CFLs, and the hypocrisy of “green” energy policies.
Topics: Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, personal liberty, environmentalism, CFLs, incandescent light bulbs, government mandates, property rights, energy efficiency
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek - Host
- Doug Bandow - Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute
- Caller (Rich) - Listener from San Francisco
- Caller (Anne) - Listener from San Francisco
- Caller (Robert) - Listener from San Francisco
The End of the Incandescent Era [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show. This is your host, Bob Zadek, at 910, more stimulating talk. When I was a kid growing up in Queens, one of my favorite things was stamp collecting. I was a collector. All kids were. We collected baseball cards. I collected stamps. I collected and still collect coins. I had a Scott stamp collector’s album. I would order stamps from Boys’ Life magazine and from other stamp advertisements on the back of comic books. It was actually great fun, wholesome. It was a nice way to spend part of my growing up.
Well, stamp collecting is going to be replaced, compliments of a bill entitled the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. As a compliment of that bill, all grownups will be relegated to also being collectors. What are they going to collect? Light bulbs. We’re all going to be light bulb collectors. If you don’t believe it, read the papers. In England, grownups are collecting light bulbs as we speak. So are they collecting in Germany. We’re all going to be incandescent light bulb collectors because in 2012, incandescent light bulbs essentially become illegal. You can’t buy them.
What could be more American than a light bulb? What could be more personal than how you light your house? But starting in 2012, our government will tell you how to light your house. They will mandate that your cozy living room have all of the warmth of a DMV office. To discuss this topic, this intrusion, this denial of the freedom even to light your own house, to discuss how our home will still be our castle, just a dark castle, to help me, I’m pleased to have Doug Bandow. Doug is a senior fellow from the Cato Institute. He specializes in, among other things, civil liberties. He was a special assistant to President Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He’s a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Doug will be here for half the show, then he’s got to pack and do God’s work around the country. Doug, welcome to the show.
Doug Bandow: Happy to be on.
Bob Zadek: Doug, tell us about the strangely named Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, a Bush-era statute.
Doug Bandow: Well, see, Congress is never willing to stand back and just allow market incentives to work. That is, prices rise, you probably want to save money. They look ahead and say, “We know the answer, so by God, we’re going to make everybody live up to it.” And they’ve decided that on light bulbs. Incandescent light bulbs aren’t efficient enough, so get rid of them. That’s basically what Congress decided.
Bob Zadek: So Congress has decided no more incandescent light bulbs. And the reason, of course, is—and this is the world’s silliest reason—to reduce our dependence upon foreign oil. I have never understood that. We are not dependent upon foreign oil. We buy foreign oil because it’s cheap. Just like it’s as if we were saying we are dependent upon foreign sneakers. We buy a lot of foreign sneakers because they’re cheaper than domestic sneakers. But we’re hardly dependent upon Chinese sneakers. The world will go on even without foreign oil. So here we are intruding into our home and mandating something which is common, easy to use, everybody likes it, it’s dirt cheap, we know how to manufacture them, and Congress has decided no more incandescent light bulbs. From now on, or starting in 2012, you must use a fluorescent light, whether you’re happy with the color, happy with the longevity, happy with the value, you have to use it. And the assumption is that they are more energy efficient. So Congress didn’t mandate or didn’t make incandescent bulbs illegal, they just said bulbs you use in your home, in your factory, everywhere, bulbs must have a certain level of efficiency, and that efficiency can only be reached by fluorescent bulbs.
Doug Bandow: That’s right. Yeah, and of course, there are a lot of issues, as you pointed out. The problem here is Congress just says one measure of efficiency, but in fact, a lot of people for good reason like the lighting of incandescent light bulbs. Incandescent bulbs give off heat. And they also, if you just want to light on for a short period of time, fluorescent bulbs take a while to kind of fully go on, and you lose the efficiency. Incandescent bulbs are great. You flip them on, you flip them off. None of these things, of course, entered into Congress’s consideration.
The Hazards of CFLs [02:38]
Bob Zadek: And also what didn’t enter their consideration—well, they did consider it, but they just ignored it—is the fact that fluorescent bulbs have mercury, which itself is hazardous material. Now, if you folks out there are curious about the two years you have left to use incandescent bulbs, we’d love to hear from you, Doug and I, at 800-345-5639. If you are not happy with this yet another intrusion into our lives, bob@bobzadek.com or 800-345-KNEW. We’ll take your light bulb and related questions. Now, Doug, from what I’ve been reading about these fluorescent bulbs, you virtually have to wear a Hazmat suit if they break. You know, with an incandescent bulb, you vacuum it up and you’re done. With a mercury bulb, you need a Hazmat suit.
Doug Bandow: My guess is most of your listeners at one point or another have broken a bulb. I certainly have. I’ve dropped them, I’ve twisted them too hard. I mean, any number of things can happen with them. With an incandescent bulb, you simply have to make sure you don’t step on them in your bare feet. But the fluorescent, you’re right, the mercury is considered a hazardous material. There’s also the issue of disposal. I mean, what do you do with them when they burn out? I mean, are you going to just toss them into your trash? Well, you do that, we run into all sorts of issues of essentially mercury getting into the waste stream, getting into the groundwater, any number of these things.
Bob Zadek: Getting into our sushi.
Doug Bandow: Hey, yes, exactly. I mean, so this—and so what we’re suddenly doing is forcing everyone in America to become some kind of an environmental engineer in handling these things. If you drop them, you’re right, in essence, yeah, you need a fine gloves, you need to do all sorts of stuff, you’re not supposed to handle it. Well, how do we expect normal homeowners to deal with this?
Bob Zadek: And what we’re going to be learning is there’s a whole manual. We have to now read the directions. In fact, there’s a discussion going on in Congress where the FTC is now—has to approve handling instructions for a damn light bulb. Can you imagine? Now, it’s enough for me to have to learn how to use my clock radio, learn how to use my DVD, learn how to use all my other stuff. Now, I’ve got to go to night school to learn how to handle fluorescent bulbs. It’s another thing to deal with.
Doug Bandow: And you can imagine the more complicated it gets, the more likely people are to say, “Well, forget that,” and just pick them up by hand and toss them in the trash. So you can come up with all these procedures and do an education campaign, but at the end of the day, normal people are going to look at this and say, “You’re nuts. I’m dealing with a bulb. I don’t have an engineering degree. I don’t have time for all this stuff. It’s going in the trash.” And then, of course, we’ll have a new crisis and we’ll have a new federal program to try to figure out how to get mercury out of the soil.
The Black Market and the Nanny State [04:30]
Bob Zadek: And we’re going to have people—and what’s going to happen is starting in 2012, you can’t buy them. You can still use them until we have the incandescent light police coming to a home with search warrants looking for the filaments. But you’ll be able to use them, you just can’t buy them. Which means in 2011, I’m going to be renting a Crocker’s Lockers and loading it up with incandescent bulbs, and I’ll be selling them on the black market, cash only, no receipts available, just because there will be a market, a black market for incandescent bulbs. So yet another part of our life, the most routine thing in the world, a light bulb, has now going to become subject to black market, illegal sales, courses on how to change a light bulb. It used to be we had an expression in America, “It’s as easy as changing a light bulb.” Well, so much for that expression. That’s going to be gone forever. Now it’s going to be “as difficult as changing a light bulb.” So here we have it. Incandescent light bulbs are going to be illegal. Yet another aspect of American life goes down the tubes. I’m talking with Doug Bandow. We’ll be right back and talk to Rich in San Francisco. This is Bob Zadek, 910, more stimulating talk. I’ll be right back.
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. This is your host, Bob Zadek, on 910 AM, more stimulating talk. I’m talking with Doug Bandow. We are talking about the criminalization of incandescent light bulbs, compliments of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. We have Rich from San Francisco. Rich, welcome to the show. Rich, are you there?
Doug Bandow: I can hear him. Rich came through loud and clear to me.
Bob Zadek: Hello, Rich.
Doug Bandow: Now I don’t hear anything.
Bob Zadek: I’m sorry, we have lost Rich. I apologize. The subject is the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which will criminalize the—sorry, we have Rich on a cell phone. We dropped the call. Rich, welcome back.
Caller (Rich): Okay, I’m sorry. Can you hear me this time?
Bob Zadek: I can hear you, Rich. Thank you very much for calling.
Caller (Rich): Terrific, terrific show, Bob and Doug. Such a privilege to be talking with you. First of all, the show’s great. The work that the Cato Institute does is so important. I’m going to toss something out here. There’s a manufacturing energy cost for CFLs. They’re obviously a lot more expensive to manufacture, a lot more parts. They take—they have this little ballast thing on the bottom. They obviously cost a lot more in energy and materials to make. And I know someone’s looked at that, but we’re not reporting it. It’s just like with the hybrid cars. They cost a massive amount of energy to manufacture. So I wonder if you could comment on that.
Manufacturing Costs and Outsourcing [06:10]
Bob Zadek: Well, you’re exactly right. When the government computes the cost of using a CFL, the government only looks at the energy cost. It ignores the manufacturing cost. And in fact, the manufacturing cost is so high that we’ve outsourced the manufacturing, most of the manufacturers overseas, and there are profound quality problems in using these light bulbs. They have a high failure rate, they don’t work, and people are frustrated. They also, as I said, you have to have a manual to know how to use them. You can’t use it in an enclosed fixture because it gets too hot and the bulb burns up and the mercury gets into the air. So you’re quite right. And Doug, perhaps you can add something. The manufacturing cost, which is ignored, is part of the energy consumption, but it is ignored just to promote the use of these dumb commodities.
Doug Bandow: Oh, it’s very common to do that. I mean, you look at, you know, I mean, is ethanol a good thing? You look at the way they play with the numbers. You look at some of the recycling issues we have. The question of what it costs to make certain things and the alternatives, you actually generate less pollution making alternative products even if they aren’t recyclable. We tend to focus on one thing. So you’re right, the basically the government here is kind of fixing the numbers. It looks at one measurement, says that’s more efficient, and ignores every other cost. While there’s a reason why consumers prefer incandescent bulbs because they’re easier to use, they’re safer, all sorts of things, they’re cheaper to buy, all sorts of things.
Bob Zadek: And they look nice. And most consumers who use CFLs aren’t happy with the quality of the light. Now, some are, and you put lampshades on them and you hide the color. It doesn’t look quite like a DMV office or an operating room in a hospital, but it certainly has that institutional feel. And the real question, the sort of the Cato question, Doug, is why not just let the market decide? Put CFLs out there, and if somebody wants to use a CFL because they’re a greenie and they take an oath of allegiance to “saving the planet,” if they want to save the planet, they are free to make a statement, to vote with their light. And if I want to be reckless and to be an anti-planet kind of guy and have an incandescent bulb, why aren’t I free to do so? The market can make an intelligent choice.
Caller (Rich): Yes, absolutely. The market can make an intelligent choice, and I can choose to spend five dollars more a month on my PG&E bill to use incandescents, which is about what it would cost.
Bob Zadek: Not even. And you don’t have to worry about calling in a specialist to change a light bulb when it breaks, because if you do it wrong, you’re going to have mercury all over your house and your kids are going to get sick.
Caller (Rich): That’s right.
Bob Zadek: Well, Rich, thank you so much for your call. We appreciate your feedback and drive carefully.
Caller (Rich): Keep doing it, both of you.
The Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act [07:55]
Bob Zadek: We’re working on it. Now, of course, what’s interesting is, Doug, I don’t know if you know about Michele Bachmann’s bill. Michele Bachmann is a representative. I don’t know much about her except she’s from Minnesota, I think. She’s from Minnesota. She’s a Republican. Now, she actually introduced in Congress a bill entitled—and I can’t believe the title of this bill—the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. The Light Bulb—can you imagine what the founders must be thinking? Here we have our founders enacted the Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights. They spent their time worrying about core human freedoms. And here we have Representative Bachmann who introduces a bill called the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act. Oh my god, is that what our elected officials have to worry about? Have we come to this?
Doug Bandow: Well, of course, the founders never would have imagined that the national government had the authority to meddle in what kind of light bulbs we buy.
Bob Zadek: Well, of course they don’t have the authority. It was given to them by the Supreme Court through a whole range of cases. They weren’t supposed to have it.
Doug Bandow: That’s right. I mean, the founders would just be horrified at the thought that anyone thought this is a kind of issue that would show up in Washington. It just, from their standpoint, that’s not why you have a national government, you know, ordering people around in their home, telling them what kind of toilets to use, setting standards on their appliances and their cars. I mean, all this stuff would never have been viewed as a federal matter.
DOE Inefficiency and the Quality of Light [09:30]
Bob Zadek: And what’s really interesting, Doug, in reading the national press, I found an article in the New York Times which is really interesting and it speaks directly to this. It talked about the Energy Department. And we shouldn’t even have an Energy Department. I mean, we have a sun. We don’t need an Energy Department. The sun takes care of that stuff. But we have an Energy Department. And the Energy Department was mandated by Congress to create efficiency standards for appliances. And you know what they said? They said they were supposed to update these standards in 1997, but they fell behind. In other words, they were inefficient. If the—if we are inefficient in setting the standards, how can the government begin to dictate anything about efficiency? It just boggles the mind.
Doug Bandow: No, it’s incredible. I mean, the Jimmy Carter energy plan, one of the things that it did was set temperatures for buildings open to the public. So if you had an office building, federal law determined what the temperature should be in your building. I mean, again, this is an amazing overreach of politicians.
Bob Zadek: And also, I am curious right now when I check into some hotels, hotels have these curly—they look like actually white fried onion rings to me—but they’re curly little fluorescent CFLs in the lighting fixture. It’s pretty ugly stuff. Now, so people are using these bulbs today, but not members of Congress. Why aren’t members of Congress, why aren’t they standing in front of these harsh fluorescent light tubes and show up all their wrinkles? But they have the—they’ll be the last to convert. Again, Congress will dictate to us how our homes must look, how our darkened castles must look, but they don’t do the same thing for themselves. And the science is flawed because it doesn’t save energy. It’s just guilt-inducing and is exposing Americans to a health risk with the mercury, which we haven’t yet come to grips with.
Doug Bandow: That’s exactly right. And I think most fundamentally, it’s a threat to our liberty. I mean, this is something which should be our choice. It should not be something that’s set in the political process. That’s not what government is for.
Disposal and Environmental Risks [11:10]
Bob Zadek: And to me, every sushi restaurant in the country ought to be up in arms because by 2013, the oceans are going to be full of mercury from all these busted fluorescent light bulbs and nobody is going to be eating sushi. And Mrs. Paul’s fish chips are going to be down the tube as well. They should be in bankruptcy by 2013 when all the mercury gets into the world. And it was interesting, there was a story that I read about some folks in San Francisco. They were determined—they were called the “Zirchers”—and they were determined, because it’s San Francisco, to be the first ones on their block to have a fully fluorescent house. They went out there and they bought all these fluorescent light bulbs and they put them in their house and they went crazy. They said, as reported in the Chronicle, they said many didn’t work. The Zirchers were miserable. And then they said, quote, “We’re both college educated and pay attention to the labels we read.” Oh my god, you have to be college educated and read all the labels just to change a light bulb.
Doug Bandow: Yep, you need to go off for a PhD in light bulbs.
Bob Zadek: So now, Doug, it looks like I’m not very optimistic about the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act ever getting anywhere too soon, not the way Congress is now organized. But all we can do is hope for the best, can’t we?
Doug Bandow: That’s right. And we can hope as we get closer and people realize what’s about to happen that maybe we’ll have a bit of a public protest and change things.
The Erosion of Personal Freedom [13:10]
Bob Zadek: Well, the problem is, of course, it’s the nanny state syndrome where we are guilt-induced and now by legislation forced to make choices that we would have thought we were intelligent enough to decide on our own. I would like to think—I have a couple of degrees and I went to law school—I’d like to think that Congress would say I am competent enough to decide what kind of a light bulb to have in my house. But I’m not given that choice. And of course, once Congress legislates light bulbs, you know what’s going to be next. It’s going to be toilet paper. It’s going to be how many pieces of toilet paper you can use, how much soap you can use. Already we’re down to regulating washers and dryers. So Congress is coming into our homes, folks. Open up the door. Doug, thank you so much for joining us. This is Bob Zadek, 910, more stimulating talk on KNEW. Doug has to go and do God’s work. He’s going to be doing some traveling. I’ll be back after the break with more on the loss of freedom, incandescent bulbs, and we’ll be happy to talk to Anne in San Francisco when we come back.
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, on 910 AM, more stimulating talk. Anne in San Francisco, welcome to the show.
Caller (Anne): Oh, thank you. I’m calling because I totally agree with you about incandescent bulbs, but I’m curious to know what is the proper way to dispose of them. I know your guest just left.
Bob Zadek: No, no, I’m very CFL knowledgeable. I wouldn’t dare come on the show unless I took a nighttime course in how to change a light bulb. So I can help you, Anne. First, of course, you should own—you can get them from Costco—a Hazmat suit to keep hanging in your front closet. But a little more seriously, these bulbs emit—they have solid mercury and mercury fumes.
Caller (Anne): No, I mean the good kind, the incandescent kind. How do you dispose of those?
Bob Zadek: You throw it in the trash.
Caller (Anne): Really?
Bob Zadek: You throw it in the trash. It’s the American way to do it. You throw it in the trash and you’re done.
Caller (Anne): Okay, well, I thought there was some green way of doing that, but maybe not. Okay, well, thank you very much.
Bob Zadek: Any other disposal items you want to discuss, Anne, while you’re on the show?
Caller (Anne): That’s it for now. Thanks.
Bob Zadek: Thanks a lot for calling.
Environmental Hypocrisy: Wind Farms [15:30]
Bob Zadek: So we have now the intrusion into one of the most ordinary and regular parts of American life, the changing of a light bulb. And now all of a sudden we are told we’re not competent to make an intelligent decision by those people who want to “save the planet.” And you know what goes on is we’re told to save the planet for our grandchildren. You know our grandchildren are going to be told “save the planet for their grandchildren,” and their grandchildren after that. We’re never going to reach the point to say, “Okay, the planet is saved. Do what you want.” It’s such a phony issue. It’s just a case of the erosion of personal freedom, the distrust that government has of its citizens, that we are not competent to even decide what kind of a light bulb to have.
And the science is all junk. It’ll—it’s allegedly going to save the environment, but you know why? Because it says the utilities which generate electricity will burn less coal. But in California, for example, and in many Western states, the utilities don’t burn coal. They use water and hydro to create electricity. That means by saving electricity, you don’t help the planet at all. It’s neutral. So in the country, in California, for example, we are told—and Gavin Newsom is all over this in San Francisco—we are told switch to CFLs, it’ll save the planet. Well, really, it is planet neutral. It makes no difference. But under this one-size-fits-all, we are forced to switch from something we love to use, we’re comfortable with, because Congress has said CFLs are the way of the future.
And it’s utter hypocrisy. It requires us to make a sacrifice. Now we have to sacrifice even how we live and the ambiance in our own household, what light we use to read a book, if we still have books. We have Kindles, if we still have books, we are now told what kind of light to use. And we know it starts with light bulbs, and now Congress is on a roll and they will be intruding more and more and more into our lives. And the alleged reason is reduced dependence upon foreign oil. But we don’t use foreign oil to burn electricity, so it’s utter fallacy. So there is no basis whatever. There is such environmental hypocrisy going on.
And we had the same experience and we’re having the same experience now with wind turbines. Remember there was a movement to use alternative energy? And all the greenies, all the environmentalists were all over us to start using green energy. And one of the sources of green energy is wind. Wind is free, it’s recyclable, it’s forever. Remember back a few years ago, 2001, 2002, there was a plan to build a wind farm to generate enough electricity to light all of Cape Cod with offshore wind farms, to generate wind turbines. And of course, all the environmentalists who live in Cape Cod and Nantucket were up in arms, including Robert F. Kennedy, whose resume says he’s a noted environmental attorney. And he generally likes wind farms, just not six miles off the Kennedy petting zoo—I mean the Kennedy compound, sorry. He opposed that because while it was a good idea, it would generate clean energy, it was a little too close to home for him. So he was opposed to it.
So we have environmentalists who are very good at telling us what to do, mandating how we live our lives, but yet when it comes to something a little closer to home, they have a much different perspective. It is utter hypocrisy and we are left to pick up the pieces. And we are left to be made to feel guilty if we don’t save the environment for our grandkids. It falls upon us. It is utter hypocrisy.
Hoarding and Global Reactions [19:30]
Bob Zadek: There was a story recently in Cape Cod about a woman named Wendy Howland. Wendy Howland was a real greenie. She—the article was careful to say she drove a Prius, good for her, Wendy. She heats her house with solar panels. She was like the perfect greenie. Well, she wanted to build a wind turbine in her backyard to generate electricity. It was the right thing to do. She could light her whole house with this one turbine. And of course, Cape Cod, the home of all the greenies, fought her on it. And they found it to violate local zoning rules. And they said—and this was a quote from the Bourne County hearing—they said her building her wind farm or her wind turbine in her backyard on her own property would have, quote, “an adverse effect on the character of the neighborhood.” Hmm, adverse effect upon the character of the neighborhood. Wasn’t that language being used to keep out minorities about 40 or 50 years ago? It’s the same language. So here we have the environmentalists, the greenies of the world, saying somebody else must use alternative forms of energy, but not for us. We are not going to do it.
So there’s this utter hypocrisy in the green community built on the false premise of saving the planet. The planet is not in danger. The planet is not threatened by the use of incandescent light bulbs. My peace of mind, my sanctity of my home is being threatened when Congress comes in there and unscrews all my light bulbs. That’s being threatened. My freedom of choice is being threatened by Congress taking this step. But the planet is not being threatened by my using fluorescent light bulbs. Indeed, the people in my household would be threatened because of the danger of the mercury and the challenge of disposing of these fluorescent light bulbs. And it is right around the corner.
Now, my advice to you is diary early in 2011 and start to save incandescent light bulbs because you won’t be able to buy them. And if you think that I’m nuts, the New York Times reported in April, April 24th, that in England, the Brits are hoarding light bulbs. One store, one store sold 3,000 100-watt bulbs in two months. That was 30 times the usual amount. The price is 50% higher. And they had to limit consumers to 10 bulbs at a time. Can you imagine something as simple as going to Home Depot and buying a light bulb now has become a challenge and a source of hoarding? Isn’t Congress at all sensitive to what they are doing to us Americans by imposing these rules upon us? And the rules are based upon a false premise. The rules are based upon energy independence. Does anybody believe, does any of you out there believe that whether or not Americans use incandescent bulbs, which we like and which are dirt cheap and which we know how to manufacture and which can be disposed of, does anybody believe that by us using incandescent bulbs rather than ugly, unsafe fluorescent bulbs, the planet will be around for a day or two longer? I sure don’t.
So what are we doing other than Congress has to have the appearance of, quote, “doing something” so they can show they are moving towards energy independence? Independence from what? God only knows. And it’s at our expense. Our expense of freedom, freedom of choice, and the expense of the market. We are not trusted.
Solar Energy and Efficiency [21:10]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek, 910, more stimulating talk, KNEW, 800-345-5639. Sitting here in the dark in San Francisco, I’ll be right back.
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek, on 910, more stimulating talk. Robert, thanks for joining us.
Caller (Robert): Yeah, yeah, you make some salient points there. I don’t know how much the changeover is actually going to cost, but if you weigh that with the savings, it probably would be a wash. But LED lights save 98% of the energy of incandescents and should be thought of—I believe they need more perfection. But there’s many other ways to save energy. Solar concentrator, where you have concentrators that melt salt and drive steam turbines out in the desert. That’s called syntropy. I mean, you’re using the energy around you. You don’t have to look for oil or coal.
Bob Zadek: Robert, here’s a—I have a question for you if I can interrupt. You talk about saving energy. Here’s my question. We have unlimited energy. Why do we have to save something of which we have unlimited quantity? It’s like saving water. There’s plenty of water on the planet. It’s not going to be wasted. Oil, water never leaves us. Well, so long as we have a sun, and the sun is going to be around for a while, I am told by my astronomer friends, if we have unlimited energy, why do we have to save it?
Caller (Robert): We’re not utilizing the solar energy right now. And solar photovoltaic is far inferior to solar concentrator molten salt steam turbine type technology. We’re not actually using, we’re using up—the issue is that there’s pollution from coal and from oil, and it’s entropy. There’s a lot of lost energy in the process. It’s far more efficient and infinitely cleaner to use solar concentrator molten salt than any other way. I mean, you talk about nuclear, but you still have to look for the stuff and then there’s pollution involved in it and it’s dangerous potentially.
Bob Zadek: Well, that has—I agree with the point in general, but the sun is the source of all energy on the planet. It all comes from the sun. And so long as the sun’s going to be around for a while, I can relax and enjoy my incandescent light bulbs.
Caller (Robert): Well, only if we’re using solar concentrator molten salt steam turbine type production of energy. But we should be efficient in the use of our energy.
Bob Zadek: Robert, thank you very much for the call. This is Bob Zadek, 910, more stimulating talk. I’ll be back next week with Libertarian Talk Radio in the Bay Area and around the country. Thanks so much for listening.