Are CFLs a dim bulb approach to saving nature?

In this blog, and in my classes, I refer to arguments and analysis that Bjorn Lomborg offers.  With students, I typically present an environmental issue, and by discussing it they soon realize the tradeoffs that are needed.  It is always a rewarding moment for me when I see that metaphorical light bulb click on in a few of them, at least.

Light bulbs are what Lomborg tackles this time around--the government mandate that bans the use of  incandescent bulbs in favor of the compact fluorescent ones.  Lomborg, who has often argued for R&D investments that could lead us towards less carbon in our consumptive behaviors, reminds us, yet again, that:

The solution should be to focus on improving the technology—making the lights safer, brighter, warm up faster, and save more energy, so that more people will replace more of their lights. ...

Governments talk far too much about setting a relatively high carbon tax on emissions while focusing far too little on ensuring a meaningful increase in research and development to bring about necessary breakthroughs.

Limiting access to the "wrong" light bulbs or patio heaters is, ultimately, not the right path. We will only solve global warming by ensuring that alternative technologies are better than our current options. Then people the world over will choose to use them.

A mere mandate does no good.  Well, other than to get people all worked up.

With the exception of a few crazies who question the very climate change (and Lomborg is not one of them) most of us recognize the urgency to change the way we live on this lonely planet.

Some do get carried away to extremes--like those who want to restore nature to its pristine conditions and, sometimes, even represent humans as the worst living creature ever.  To these, Ron Bailey, while reviewing Emma Marris' new book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, reminds us that the pristine nature is a myth.

“Nature is almost everywhere. But wherever it is, there is one thing nature is not: pristine,” writes science journalist Emma Marris in her engaging new book Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World. She adds, “We must temper our romantic notion of untrammeled wilderness and find room next to it for the more nuanced notion of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden, tended by us.” Marris’ message will discomfort both environmental activists and most ecologists who are in thrall to the damaging cult of pristine wilderness and the false ideology of the balance of nature. But it should encourage and inspire the rest of us.

I am reminded of a graduate course I took years ago, in which we were required to read a book, whose author/title completely escapes me.  The bottom line in that book was simple: everything will be great if only there were no humans.  The professor seemed so committed to this idea as well that, and being a highly self-conscious guy during those years, I opted not to challenge him.

Bailey wraps up the book review:

One hopes that readers will take to heart Marris’ chief insight about conservation: “There is no one best goal.” She bravely and correctly concludes, “We’ve forever altered the Earth, and so now we cannot abandon it to a random fate. It is our duty to manage it. Luckily, it can be a pleasant, even joyful task if we embrace it in the right spirit. Let the rambunctious gardening begin.”

Yes, a rambunctious gardening, with light from bulbs that we willingly purchase because they are wonderfully efficient and pleasing and do not trigger headaches.