Here is a statement issued by the United Nations about mercury:
set,” UNEP head Achim Steiner said on the eve of a February 16-20
meeting in Nairobi of environment ministers who will consider a new
strategy to limit mercury. “Inaction on the global mercury challenge is
no longer an option.”
he said. “”The World Health Organization argues there is in the end no
safe limit.”
How does the UN’s new found concern fit with the green approved push to Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL’s)? Oops, it doesn’t. David Suzuki, Canada’s own Goreacle-lite, has a whole page dedicated to greenwashing the mercury content of CFL’s. I skewered that position almost exactly one year ago here.
The UN report on mercury exposes the green movement’s hypocrisy in a trap of their own making. By vigorously advocating CFL’s as essential ‘green’ technology they persuaded the governments of Canada and the UK to legislate incandescent bulbs into obsolescence, making the only lighting option available to over 100 million people the mercury-containing CFL. I can tell you first hand what normal people do when a CFL dies, and it isn’t pretty if you happen to be green.
Green zealots pushed CFL technology without considering all the facts, and now they have created the conditions for future problems of mercury content in groundwater, landfills and so on. I guess this will be like the DDT ban all over again and they try to slink off and pretend that they didn’t make things worse with their activism.
Not this time.
Not to mention that (1) they only last a fraction of their claimed time if they are not kept cool and not switched on and off, (2) they are much dimmer than claimed (a 20W CFL is only the equivalent of a 60W incandescent for most of its life), (3) they take ten times the energy of a tungsten bulb to make, (4) you are chucking a mass of complex electronics made of rare materials when you bin one,(5) they flicker and give crappy light, (6) the ‘power factor’ means they burn 50% more power than stated on the box, and (7) most of the energy ’saved’ is then made up by central heating systems using gas at low overall efficiency.
This is what you get when a bunch on technically illiterate politicians want to parade their gree credentials. In short -useless gestures imposed through green fascism, that we all have to pay for in tixic metal pollution and massively increased home lighting costs.