(Update below)
It seems that in the wheeling and dealing to pass a government budget this week, the ban on incandescent lightbulbs has been delayed. The 100W bulbs were supposed to be the first to be illegalized starting next month, but Congress apparently prohibited the administration from “spending any money to carry out the light bulb standards… That means the regs will likely go into effect next fiscal year, which starts in October 2012.”
Well, in the simplest sense, any delay to statism is good news. Of course, there are liberals on the Internet complaining that those dumb conservatives just hate regulation even when it would save them money on electric bills, but I’ve written before about how I’ve struggled to find any available lightbulbs that match the quality of existing incandescents – besides the fact that it’s arguable that the “green” savings from CFLs are offset by their manufacturing processes or the fact that they contain mercury. So a delay is good news. If things get delayed almost to the next presidential election, maybe it will get delayed again.
But it’s a rather hollow victory.
First, it’s not like the members of Congress suddenly realized that they were both inadequate and unqualified to force specific technological requirements on an industry that changes too fast for them to keep up (otherwise SOPA wouldn’t stand a chance). It’s not like they suddenly realized that those specific technological requirements were arbitrarily lobbied for by anti-competitive industry leaders and didn’t necessarily mean that consumers would automatically save money or energy or enjoy better quality lightbulbs. No, the temporary delay was just a random by-product of Congressional compromise to get everyone to agree on a massive $1 billion budget that ultimately increases the deficit – although there are supposedly some real cuts in there this time. So I have no idea if this small “victory for liberty” wasn’t more than offset by some other inhibition somewhere else.
And second, it is a very small victory. I don’t have enough information to make claims about the employment consequences of the lightbulb ban, but Tim Carney claims there are already outsourced jobs that aren’t coming back. With only two weeks until the ban was supposed to take effect, businesses probably had plans in place for shuttering 100W production, shipping, and selling, and now they’re going to have to rewrite all that. To be sure, where there’s profit to be made, the market will figure it out. But this switching-back-and-forth seems almost worse to me than the original ban, since it hasn’t actually been lifted. Now there’s “uncertainty.” Can we actually sell the bulbs until October? What if they put their foot down then – or even sooner? Is it worth even making them anymore? But what if it gets delayed again? What if it never gets banned? Right now I can’t tell you if the industry should never make the bulbs again or prepare to make them for eternity. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens…
Update: USAToday reports that “major manufacturers and retailers say they’ll hew to the efficiency standards even though Congress passed a one-year spending bill earlier this month that bars the Department of Energy from spending to enforce them through the end of September 2012.” However, because it is only illegal to make the 100W bulbs – and not to sell them – existing inventories are expected to remain on shelves for a few months. (This also means that the entrepreneurial hoarders will be able to sell their wares on eBay instead of the black market, at least for now.)