A bright idea on climate change

The Straits Times, February 24, 2007
By Gwynne Dyer



ASTONISHINGLY, it was Australia's Liberal government, so deeply sunk in climate-change denial for so long, that took the radical step of banning incandescent light bulbs. But then, Prime Minister John Howard faces an election later this year, and Australia has been suffering from the worst and longest drought in its modern history, so the electorate has been getting worried about climate change.

Severe drought is the main predicted effect of global warming in the temperate regions of the globe. Australia is already the most arid of the world's inhabited continents, and speculation has been mounting that the current drought may portend a drastic fall in the country's ability to grow food.

A political gesture was needed, and the light bulb industry is a lot easier to take on than the coal industry.

The gesture is cynical, but also amazingly effective. As Australia's Environment Minister Bill Turnbull pointed out: 'If the whole world switches to these (fluorescent) bulbs today, we would reduce our consumption of electricity (worldwide) by an amount equal to five times Australia's annual consumption of electricity.'

In other words, it would be like turning off all the lights, fans, televisions, computers, fridges, ovens and air conditioners in Japan, and most of the industrial machinery as well. That is a quick fix that would really make a difference.

The incandescent bulb was invented 125 years ago, and has changed little since. Only 5 per cent of the electricity it consumes is converted into light, with most being wasted as heat, but it still accounts for the vast majority of bulbs that light homes and workplaces around the world. The compact fluorescent bulb that should have replaced it long ago uses only one-fifth as much electricity, and lasts 10 to 20 times as long.

Compact fluorescent bulbs are more expensive, and early ones gave a cold white light that many people did not like (but that has been remedied in newer models).

They cannot replace spotlights, candle bulbs or halogen lights, and they are trickier to recycle. But they could replace 99 per cent of conventional incandescent bulbs in a year or two (since the latter burn out so often), and the average country's electricity consumption would immediately fall by about 2 per cent. Domestic electricity bills would fall by around 15 per cent.

It's a cheap, quick, one-time fix, but we need such fixes, because the situation is much worse than the experts thought even five years ago. What we do in the next 10 or 20 years will make the difference between a 1.5 deg C and a 3 deg C hotter world in the 2060s and 2070s.

That is probably the difference between great discomfort and inconvenience on the one hand, and global famine, global refugee flows and global war on the other.

Climate change is cumulative, with the greenhouse gases we emit today hanging around year after year to distort the climate further, so quick fixes are not to be despised. Even if the tipping point has finally arrived in terms of public attitudes, it will take years to translate good intentions into global treaties - and a 1 per cent cut in emissions this year is as good as a 2 per cent or 3 per cent cut in 2015. Changing the light bulb is something we can do this year.

There are other quick fixes that could offer comparable returns. Just banning all electrical appliances whose 'standby' function consumes more than one watt of power would cut global carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 1 per cent.

(The 'standby' function allows the appliance to be used straightaway without requiring it to be first warmed up for a few seconds - but current 'standby' programmes use up to 10 watts of power.)

Similarly, two measures would cut aviation's contribution to the emissions problem by up to 1 per cent.

One is to tow departing airliners out to the end of the runway rather than have them start their engines about half an hour earlier and get to the runway on their own power.

The other is to create continent-wide air traffic control systems with a single fee structure, thus ending the hassle of flying around the more expensive countries (there are 30 separate national air traffic control systems in Europe) to save on fees, at a cost of 6 per cent to 12 per cent higher emissions.

We have to do the hard stuff too - like figuring out how big developing countries such as China and India can continue to raise their living standards while the world as a whole cuts its emissions. But even with the best will in the world, that is going to take time. We need to get started on the easy stuff right now.

So here's to Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who started switching Cuba to compact fluorescent bulbs two years ago) and to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (who is doing the same) as well as to their comrade-in-arms John Howard in Australia. And lawmakers in California and New Jersey are also proposing a ban on incandescent bulbs.

Virtue flourishes in the most unexpected places.