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An Environmental Magic Trick

September 5, 2006 By Jeffrey Davis 10 Comments

Pick a city, any city. See those one million cars in that city you just chose? *Poof*, now they’re gone! Want to know how I just did that?

I changed Everyone in the USA changed one lously light bulb. (Edited due to a previous misunderstanding.)

Yeah, that’s right, if every household in America would simply replace one regular incandescent light bulb with an energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulb (the spirally kind) it would reduce the amount of CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) production to the equivalent of taking one million vehicles off the roads! Yeah, they cost a little bit more than regular incandescent bulbs, but they last longer and save you money in energy costs…not to mention the whole environmental benefit and making you a better human thing. Imagine the difference it would make if every household in the USA, or even the world, changed not just one, but all of their light bulbs.

Here’s some sources if you care to read further about these statistics: energy star, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, wateless.org, and fastcompany.com.

So now that you have the information, turn off your computer (as it too burns a ridiculous amount of energy), get out of the house, go buy some light bulbs and save the planet.

Congratulations, you’re now a top notch magician and part of the solution.

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  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/3026231 Sam Davidson

    Nice work!

    If you get ambitious and want to change ALL your light bulbs, you can buy in bulk on eBay and save money. And maybe take every car off the road? What will we do with all that pavement?

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/18206301 ceeelcee

    I’m sorry, but somebody’s got to call bullshit on this one. Even by the most optimistic projections from environmental groups, changing from incandescent to fluroescent might save 125 kg of CO2 during its lifetime. The average car releases about 5000 kg of CO2 in a year.

    I support the intention of your post. It’s a good idea to switch to fluorescents, but your math is off my a few orders of magnitude. Like 40,000,000 times.

    Go here: http://www.bestofmaui.com/miser.html#lighting for one estimate.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/7396532 Jeffrey

    ceeelcee. you’re welcome to call bullshit here any time you want ;-) . However, the math is not mine, I’m just relaying the facts I read from the EPA, EnergyStar, and an expose on global warming that I saw on the Discovery Channel.

    Those are the three major sources from my info and they all used the same figure of one million vehicles. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just saying that’s where I got my info.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/9515467 Brandonian

    RTFA

    From the Energy Star site

    If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road.

    If you or I replace a lightbulb, it won’t all that much in carbon. If everybody in America replaced a lightbulb, then we’d get rid of the million cars worth of carbon.

    Like ceeelcee, I’m all for your intention, but don’t start spreading info that simply isn’t true. If a single lightbulb output a million cars worth of carbon over it’s lifetime, you probably wouldn’t be able to live in your house because of all the CO2 spewing from the lightbulbs.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/880853 Mike

    What the EPA release says that if one lightbulb in every household were switched over, that would be the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road. There are 120 million households. Therefore, if you replaced 120 lightbulbs in your house, that would equal one car.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/7396532 Jeffrey

    Pardon me, I somehow misread the info on both sites. I’ll edit the post to reflect it.

    man I sure am glad for the gracious manner in which I was corrected *sarcasm*.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/9515467 Brandonian

    No hard feelings, my reply really doesn’t make any sense either, once I’ve gone back and reread it, especially the second paragraph.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/18206301 ceeelcee

    No rabidity intended, man. I told you I supported the idea. But for the want of a missing word or two, I was worried that nobody would even pay attention to a good idea because the claim looked so ludicrous. Keep fighting the good fight.

    Plus, it’s not like you were ragging on the Crocodile Hunter or anything…

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/7396532 Jeffrey

    thanks, ceeelcee, and too true about the Crocodile Hunter. Sad to have seen that post this weekend.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/5137005 gavin richardson

    i bought some regardless