Better Use of Light Bulbs Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY.

First, let's start with how much electricity this saves for our country. It saves the need to construct 30 coal-fired plants over the next 20 years in the United States.

Now, if you are a coal executive, you are a nuclear executive, you are going, Oh, no, kill those more efficient light bulbs. People in America are going to consume less electricity. It will cut into our profits. People will buy these light bulbs.

And, by the way, here's a Sylvania, which, by the way, looks just like those old bulbs too, because it is an old bulb. They just made it more efficient. And so people who are nostalgic for the way bulbs looked for the last hundred years, it is the same look, and it cost a buck 69 for this bulb. But it will save you, over the next 5 years, over the next 10 years, a lot of money. But it won't cost the coal industry and the nuclear industry, who generate electricity, a lot of money because they won't have to build 30 new coal-fired plants.

So let's just think about other things.

And, by the way, every living descendant of Thomas Alva Edison opposes this amendment; by the way, as would every living descendant of Alexander Graham Bell oppose moving from black rotary phones to BlackBerries. I think that Alexander Graham Bell and his descendants would say, I think he would be happy that you made the transition. But, of course, we had to pass legislation here on the House floor to move that technology.

I think that people probably would think twice if a Xerox machine had to come with carbon paper at the same time, just in case people were still nostalgic for carbon paper rather than Xerox paper, because that's really what this debate is all about. It's really a debate about whether or not we are going to continue to see an increase in the efficiency of technologies in our society, especially those that consume energy.

In other words, there is a point to this, and the point is it reduces the amount of greenhouse gases that we have to send up into the atmosphere. It reduces the amount of energy that we have to think about importing from other countries. And it gives to the consumers something that, over the life of the light bulb--and we are talking here about Philips and Sylvania and other companies who have already figured out in the last 4 years how to comply with the law--you don't have to buy one of those funny-looking new light bulbs. You can just buy one of those old light bulbs that look just like the one that your mother and father used to go down to the store and buy. Why? Because finally they had to make them more efficient.

And, by the way, what is the analogy? Well, back in 1987, I was able to author the Appliance Efficiency Act of 1987. And what has happened since then? Well, believe it or not, refrigerators are now three or four times more efficient. Air conditioning systems are now three to four times more
efficient. And because of that, there are hundreds of coal-fired plants that did not have to get built in this country.

Because all of these lights in this room, all of the air conditioning in this room, well, for every building across the country, piled up, that's why we need coal-fired and nuclear-fired plants.

The fewer of them that there are is directly related to how efficient we make the things that we plug into the wall. So light bulbs are at the very top of the list because they're on in every single room in the United States every day. So if you can double the efficiency, then you reduce dramatically the number of nuclear power plants and of coal-fired plants that have to get built.

That's really what we should be all about. We have to learn how to think smarter and not harder. We have to think how we use technology to improve our society and not bring out legislation on the floor that prohibits the advance of technology, prohibits the advance of science, prohibits the advance of efficiency in our society. And just like the Blackberry has transformed our society in the last 15 years and no one would want to go back to that old era of 1996 before the broadband revolution began, the same thing is true for these more, modern, efficient light bulbs. They save people money. They give them just the same kind of light. They reduce the amount of pollution that we send up into the atmosphere, and they make America the leader technologically on these technologies that are ultimately going to be sold in every country in the world.

I urge a "no'' vote.

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