Angry in the Great White North

Australia is making a move to more energy efficiency:

Australia, which has yet to sign the Kyoto Protocol, has come up with a bright idea to tackle global warming, announcing yesterday plans to ban traditional lightbulbs.

By phasing out incandescent lightbulbs in favour of more fuel-efficient fluorescent bulbs, the government believes, that within a decade, it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by four million tons a year.

"It will be illegal to sell a product that doesn't meet the energy standard," said the environment minister Malcolm Turnbull. "And, by 2010, you simply won't be able to buy incandescent lightbulbs because they won't meet the energy standard."

Makes sense. It is a solution that does not hurt the economy. Indeed, it creates a market for a new product and for further technical innovation.

But, of course, environmentalists are never happy:

Environmental groups said the initiative was a step in the right direction. However, they insisted that a more meaningful gesture would be for the government to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

More meaningful? Just how stupid do you have to be before you can qualify to be an environmentalist?

I invite these Australian moonbats to come to the Up Over from Down Under. Canada made the "meaningful gesture" of signing the Kyoto Protocal in 1998 and formally ratified it in 2002. In that time, nothing else happened. The government spent millions on studies, and not a single member of the Liberal brain trust came up with the idea of swapping out lightbulbs, which of course through away 95% of the energy put into them as useless heat.

Presumably, it was too hard for Stephane Dion, the environment minister at the time, to set the correct priorities. Instead we got the "One Tonne Challenge" commercial spots featuring comedian Rick Mercer.

Light bulbs aren't the way to meet the Kyoto targets. Nothing will do that. I doubt we need to, frankly. But incandescent lightbulbs are wasteful, and based on a 19th century design (Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin received a patent in 1874, though the principle was first demonstrated as early as 1801). We can do better. As long as we get our priorities straight.

For some environmentalists, the priority is to sign a piece of paper instead of taking action.

For Stephane Dion, well, priorities are really, really hard. Best not to worry too much about them.