Greener Energy: A Bright Idea
By Evelyn Chih Yih Chan
Published on Tuesday, October 30, 2007
To the Editor:
I am writing from Paris, where Al Gore was the honored guest at the French National Conference on the Environment on Oct. 25. Gore's proposal to the U.S. Congress to ban incandescent lightbulbs seems anything but absurd to me, given the Australian ban as of 2009, an example many European countries are ready to follow ("Deliberating on Al Gore," Oct. 26). As for the analogy of incandescent light bulbs/energy efficient ones, postal mail/e-mail, vinyl LPs/CDs, CDs/iTunes, surely the average reader sees why it's faulty.
After I replaced all the lightbulbs in my former condo in Paris, my electricity bill took a drastic dive and the investment paid for itself within one year. I'm now having solar panels installed on the roof of my new house south of Paris, for which I'm even getting a subsidy from the local government in addition to a hefty tax credit.
Finally, I hope that once Talamo '11 becomes a homeowner himself, he, too, would be willing to purchase "carbon offsets" to make his home "carbon neutral" -- unless, of course, he's so fortunate as to have a 100 percent-environmentally-friendly home his first time around, or even his last.