Democrats are trying to have it both ways on lightbulbs.
They declare that lightbulbs are a trifle, but also that it’s imperative the federal government regulate them. They are up in arms that the Trump Energy Department would undo regulations, but Obama didn’t issue the regulations in question until his last day in power.
On lightbulbs, Democrats show a shallow hypocrisy that reflects a deeper one.
Elizabeth Warren, one of the front-runners for the Democratic nomination, got very upset recently when CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked her, “Do you think that the government should be in the business of telling you what kind of lightbulb you can have?”
“Oh come on, give me a break!” she said. “This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry hopes we’re all talking about.”
She said, “They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws, and around your cheeseburgers when 70% of the pollution, of the carbon that we’re throwing into the air, comes from three industries.”
We hope the moderators at Thursday night’s Democratic debate ask Warren a follow-up: How can a lightbulb be important enough to outlaw but not important enough to talk about?
It’s a common tactic of the Left, and on one level it’s just plain old demagoguery. Regularly, we are told that conservatives objecting to lightbulb mandates are obsessing over trivia. Isn’t the “obsession” on the part of the lawmakers who wrote the laws on lightbulbs, and triggering dozens of regulations about which lightbulbs may be bought, sold, imported, and made?
On another level, coming from lawmakers, it’s a bit despotic: We will regulate how you live your life, and if you ask us about it, we’ll attack you.
If lightbulbs are a tiny part of the climate debate, why was there such uproar over the Trump administration’s decision to halt new regulations that were written by the Obama administration but that haven’t gone into effect yet?
The 2007 energy bill effectively outlawed most traditional incandescent bulbs through efficiency mandates on “general service lamps.” On the last full day of the Obama administration, the Energy Department issued a rule redefining the term “general service lamp” to include specialty bulbs, such as three-way bulbs and chandelier bulbs.
Why did the Department of Energy play this Orwellian word game? “DOE expects these sales will likely increase since these lamps could be used as replacements for other regulated lamp types,” the agency explained on January 19, 2017.
In other words, the Obama administration knew that people appreciate traditional incandescents and would buy the classes of bulbs where traditional incandescents were still allowed. So they changed the rules to deny consumers even that little avenue of choice.
Again, Democrats proclaim it’s absurd to worry about light bulbs, yet a Democratic administration went on a hunt to sniff out where consumers might still be buying traditional bulbs.
Also, the media and Democrats are really upset about Trump “rolling back” lightbulb rules, but those rules aren’t even in effect yet. If three-way bulbs and chandelier bulbs were such a threat to the climate, why didn’t Obama rope them into the lightbulb mandates earlier? Trump’s “deregulation” is basically preserving the regulatory structure that existed throughout the Obama administration.
These little hypocrisies point to a bigger hypocrisy.
Democrats are willing to inconvenience us all in the name of saving the planet, but they’re unwilling to take the most practical steps to actually slash greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to climate change. Nuclear power is the only feasible zero-carbon source of energy, yet Warren and some of her rivals want to ban it.
Sometimes it seems as though the green folk are less interested in saving the planet than they are in telling us how to live, and then telling us to quit complaining.
