More EU muppetry - Mandelson listens to the candle makers
So, having said that incandescent bulbs should be replaced with energy saving bulbs, the EU commission, or more specifically Peter Mandelson, has given into industry pressure to keep tariffs on cheaper imported energy saving bulbs meaning that energy saving light bulbs will continue to be more expensive than they need to be for at least another year to preserve the profits of Osram.
What a great way to help the environment guys. Discouraging people from using less energy is a great way to go about things.
Next they’ll decide that blacking out the sun is a good idea as its unfair competition for the light bulb manufacturers. I think people should be sending the commissioner copies of Bastiat’s Petition of the Candle Makers…
Update:
You can find the commissioner’s contact details here. I do encourage people to contact him.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Maybe he will suffer the same fate as St. Blaise, who had the flesh torn from his body by maddened wool-combers.
St Blaise is the patron saint of sore throats, and on his feast day you can have crossed candles put at your throat by a priest in the hope of a miraculous cure.
I wonder what Mandelson will reply?
August 30th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Of course, the approch that dictates changing the lightbulbs is totally wrong anyway. Rather than addressing the externaility of environmental damage on a coherent and even way, allowing the market to make a correction, they just chase up whatever the public mood dictates should be done in acts of populistic administration.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
The irony of the bulb-protectionism is that the EU plans to ban the old-fashioned light bulb around 2012, but before doing so, it actually bans the import of the energy efficient alternative.
The argument for prohibiting the bulb is that people do not switch to energy saving bulbs, which keeps both CO2 emission and energy import dependence high.
On the other hand to prevent ‘dumping’ cheap energy efficient bulbs to the European market it levies a 66% percent duty on Chinese import. This makes the desired switch exactly 66% dearer to the customer. The argument is that the Euroepan bulb industry is in its infancy and it has not enough capacity to allow all the European households’ switch to energy saving bulbs.
It should be obvious for any rational agent that getting rid of the customs would drive the price of the energy saving bulbs down, the capacity shortage would be eliminated, the European industry would be forced to compete with the Chinese manufacturers, and probably there would be no incandescent bulbs on the European retail market by the time of the proposed ban.
Everybody would be better of: buyers of the bulbs, buyers of energy, CO2 emissions, and the prohibition would not be needed so anybody who would like to make a movie set in 2007 in the year 2012 could easily buy incandescent bulbs for the scenery of the film. The economic freedom of the European consumers and the artistic freedom of those people who still need the old bulb would not be harmed.