Green’s Mercury Conundrum

The New York Time’s Wheels section notes how pressure from Green groups forced General Motors to pay its dues to a project called End of Life Vehicle Solutions Corporation (ELVS).  The concern was that mercury switches from GM vehicles may be improperly disposed of:

As long as the switches remain in place, they’re unlikely to present a health danger, but when cars are crushed at the end of their life, the mercury in the switches can be released. The Environmental Protection Agency says, “Mercury exposure at high levels can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system of people of all ages.”

ELVS is an initiative created by automakers to deal with legacy product issues that could be a threat to public safety or the environment, or both.  The issue here is not that post-bankruptcy GM tried to disassociate itself from ELVS, but that Green groups considered the danger of mercury disposal enough of a problem to pressure GM to live up to its commitment.

So far, so good.  Or is it?

As the Green lobby insists mercury from old switches is dangerous enough to require special handling, the governments of the UK, the European Union, Canada, The USA, Australia and New Zealand and more bowed to Green pressure to legislate the end of incandescent light bulbs in favor of mercury-laden compact flourescent lamps (CFL’s).

In the near future, hundreds of millions of people will have no choice but to use CFL’s to illuminate their homes.  Every CFL contains mercury, and a broken bulb needs special clean-up care:

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The Federal trade Commission has decided the lamps need a special label, in part to warn consumers of the dangerous mercury content.

In the US, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa , Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Utah and Maryland require vehicle manufacturers to pay for proper mercury recovery and disposal.  Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington have state-funded programs to achieve the same.  It is incongruous that these states will soon have their environmental stewardship efforts undone by the unintended consequences of environmentalists CFL agenda.

A single broken CFL in your home is certainly inconvenient, but it is nothing compared with the environmental impact that sending millions of dead CFL’s to landfills will have.  Civic authorities suggest consumers must dispose of used CFL’s properly, but people will do what they’ve always done with old light bulbs, they’ll throw them in the trash.  Greens spent $300 million to persuade Americans that global warming is a problem, only to see the issue decline in the public’s awareness.  What chance is there that ordinary people can be persuaded to care about how to throw out a broken light bulb?

On one hand we have greens lobbying effectively for automakers to pay for mercury switch disposal, and on the other we have greens lobbying effectively to force people to use mercury-containing CFL’s.

Greens claim the reduction in electricity demand is enough for them to support mercury-laden CFL’s.  It would be safer, and in the end cheaper, to build more power plants to keep our incandescents burning rather than deal with the future deadly effects of mercury in our groundwater.