Posted on 10/06/2007 7:49:52 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
Environmentalists often tout the theory that investing in forward-looking energy-efficient technologies is a smart way for U.S. companies to create domestic jobs and carve out a competitive niche in the global economy of the future. But it doesn't necessarily have to work out that way. On Thursday, General Electric, citing the fact that sales of incandescent bulbs are declining by about 10 percent a year, announced that it was closing seven lighting manufacturing facilities in North and South America.
Six of those plants are in Ohio. The vast majority of the compact fluorescent light bulbs that are replacing incandescents are manufactured in China. A union-led campaign launched in March argues that GE should invest in new lighting technologies in the United States, but GE claims that to manufacture CFLs in the U.S. would require adding 50 cents to the price of each bulb.
(At Screwthatbulb.org, a site created by the Communications Workers of America, the union claims that the European Commission banned Chinese-manufactured CFLs, but that assertion is not correct. There is a steep tariff on Chinese CFLs in the EU, but even so, two-thirds of the CFLs sold in Europe are made in China.)
A story in the Youngstown, Ohio, Vindicator covering the closing of two local plants serves as a minor elegy for every factory forced to close by the pressures of globalization.
GE said Thursday the Austintown Products Plant and Niles Glass Plant are to be shut down Nov. 1, 2008, with production shipped to foreign plants or outside suppliers....
The Austintown plant, which has 73 workers, is one of three plants that make filaments for incandescent bulbs. [A spokesman for GE] said production volumes for these bulbs are down, so the company now can fill all of its orders at the other plants, which are in Mexico and Hungary....
So, yet another paradox that may not bear too much pondering, if one wants to make it through the day. Replacing your incandescents with CFLs will cut your electricity bill, there's little doubt about that, but it will also contribute to job loss in Ohio, and the likely increase of industrial pollution in China.
The trick will be disposing of your CFLs before
they are declared hazardous waste.”
Thanks. You nailed it.
Fluorescents can be manufactured in color-corrected varieties. I’m not sure if that has trickled down to the compacts yet. In any case, make sure you have your finances in order before buying them. :)
OK folks...
Can anyone in the class tell me why US Manufacturing has been destroyed???
it couldn’t be LIBERAL/DEMOCRAT Policies, could it???
“to manufacture CFLs in the U.S. would require adding 50 cents to the price of each bulb.”
And that’s BEFORE you add in the huge costs of “Free” healthcare...
With or without unions, manufacturing would have moved overseas.
• SB437 expands some renewable energy programs and allows more credits for consumers who produce their own power; and AB178 bans the sale of incandescent light bulbs in Nevada starting in 2012.
Almost 200 new Nevada laws take effect today
Congressional legislation introduced in March even proposes a lighting standard, beginning in 2012, that current incandescent bulbs would not meet.
New fluorescents have a dark side
Another, AB 722, would have made it illegal to sell incandescent light bulbs, causing another national stir. That bill never made it out of the Assembly.
Hopes for major achievement dashed as California legislature wraps up
ENERGY-SAPPING incandescent light bulbs will be banned within three years as the federal Government attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 800,000 tonnes a year.
Incandescent bulbs given the flick
Ontario will ban the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2012, a move that follows in the footsteps of Australia, the province said Wednesday.
Ontario turns out the lights on inefficient bulbs
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.
Whatever rule is proposed by the groups would likely be incorporated into energy legislation passed last week by the Senate Energy Committee that the full chamber is set to debate by the end of the month, committee aides say.
Households Would Need New Bulbs To Meet Lighting-Efficiency Rule
“Not global warming (AFAIK) but mercury pollution.”
I’m going to laugh hystericly when the Mercury Product Liability lawsuits begin...
A Lawyer friend is already licking his chops over that one...
Can anyone in the class tell me why US Manufacturing has been destroyed???
Because it’s cheaper to pay manufacture something in a country where the average pay is under $2.00 an hour.
Why did you bother? Utter waste of time.
LOL! You are right about that. Thanks, - bill.
What has caused our automotive industry to be in the condition they are in today? Could it be gov. regulations and union thugs? When they move everything overseas lets blame those nasty Americans who work for companies without unions who can compete for not using all their disposable income buying the union label.
“I don’t mind paying 50 cents extra per bulb to avoid having to buy Chinese and to patronize American workers instead, I DO have a problem with part of that 50 cents going to the coffers of some anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-human labor union.”
Don’t worry...
These bulbs will NEVER be made enmass in the United States.
The potential libility is just too great.
That they are being sold here, AT ALL, when breaking one should, by all rights, require a HAZMAT RESPONSE to clean up (IF you are following the current Enviro laws)
I know. He was just so pitiful whining about my one liners.
Wages are but a SMALL part of the equation...
Over-Taxation..
Over-Unionization..
Over-Regulation...
Inane Enviro Rules...
And UNLIMITED CIVIL LIABILTY add FAR more to costs than simple wages.
Could anyone tell the class which party pushes these job-killing policies?
Add in the Standardized Shipping Container, and you have recipe for disaster..
I was a member of two unions in my youth and I was simply appalled at how they rationalized the outright destruction of the manufacturing base of America.
Here are two postulates:
America has always had a large industrial base.
That industrial base would still be here right now if there were no unions.
Pick at it, argue with semantical trivia, but that fact remains.
It would still be here.
I can not read under those new lights
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