Government Mandated Insanity

Upset about FirstEnergy's pricey, hand-delivered light bulbs ? You ain't seen nothing yet

In just a few days, people dressed in green T-shirts and green caps will begin the rather enormous task of delivering two 23-watt, warm-white, compact fluorescent light bulbs to every residence FirstEnergy serves.

They won't ask whether you want them. They'll just leave them on your doorstep, in a bag that will also contain a brochure called "More Than 100 Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill."

They won't ask for payment, though. As you might expect with an electric utility, that's already wired.

These whiz-bang new light bulbs -- which cost FirstEnergy $3.50 each, and which you could buy all by yourself at any number of stores for even less if you were still trusted to do that sort of thing -- will cost you $21.60 for the pair. You'll pay it off over the next three years, at 60 cents a month added to your electric bill.

This is all about global warming, of course. Or to be less specific, climate change. Or to be more nebulous yet, greenhouse gases.

The General Assembly passed a law last year requiring Ohio's utilities to reduce their customers' energy use by 22 percent, and to shift 12.5 percent of their power production to "renewable" energy sources -- solar and wind, for instance -- all by 2025.

The Great Light Bulb Boondoggle is the leading edge of an energy-reduction effort to comply with commands the government of Ohio has issued to the tides of technology.

Those commands -- to foist immature and inefficient generation methods on consumers and push aside less expensive, more efficient power sources, like coal -- will be enforceable only at great expense to the public.