In reference to: http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Liberal+light+bulb+edict+switched+socialism/4835935/story.html
Dear Editing Staff of The Province,
I recently flipped through your “newspaper” while waiting for breakfast at a café, and I was reminded just why I tend to normally consider it to be a better fire-starter than read. The article that so blatantly made this clear was Jon Ferry’s “Liberal light-bulb edict switched-on socialism”. In the article, Mr. Ferry free-associates from one topic to another, sounding like a McCarthy-era propagandist so afraid of green and red that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas.
From Jon’s take on the light bulb industry, you would think that he’s being given hefty payola from Thomas Edison himself. He talks about how cheap incandescent light bulbs are compared to compact fluorescents, without mentioning that you save far more in your electricity bills. He sounds like a man who has so much trouble with math that he eats out every meal because it’s far cheaper than grocery shopping, addicted to the present and blind to the future.
Here’s a fun one, apparently by switching from one bulb to another, both of which are made by the same extremely large multinational corporations we’re socialist, who knew? There isn’t really much to say about this recurring thread in the article, other than the fact that if one is going to make huge overarching political statements, one should first be familiar with central tenets of the ethos, so as to not sound like a complete moron.
Jon treats us to the fact that “Our bodies are made of carbon”, and therefore it can’t cause climate change. Which beyond being a blatant lie is also exactly the same as saying that because we are 70% water we cannot drown.
The one thing that Jon does right in this article is to bring up NDP Energy Critic John Horgan’s concerns over toxicity in CFLs. Finally I thought, Jon might be able to bring real adult concerns to the table, maybe he can turn this into a mature debate about toxicity levels, or government regulation. But he fumbles that one to, diverting into a bit on how “those British Columbians [he’s] talked to positively hate the new pretzel-shaped bulbs, which … cast a sickly light, are slow to glow”. By this point, I begin to wonder if his vision’s failing, considering that most CFLs cast a light indistinguishable from incandescents called "soft white", except for those clearly marked “White Light”, which do exactly what they say they do.
His conclusion is that believing in Climate Change is akin to believing in the rapture, and bases it on absolutely nothing. Also, he says that the world hasn’t warmed in the last ten years, even though 2010 was the hottest year on record.
I could go on and on about Jon’s unfounded opinions, but this whole article seems to be fueled by a grumpy, old, entitled, white man with nothing better to do than complain about the fact that in the next 6 months when he has to go shopping and get new bulbs they’re going to gouge him an extra five or six whole dollars. He’ll have to take them home and screw them in same as always and look at a swirly “pretzel-shape”, rather than a vaguely testicular one, shed the miracle of electric light through the poorly decorated rooms of his sterile, unloving house. Worst of all, he won’t have to go to the store to buy new bulbs by the time he’s passed away, and his grandchildren might even get more inheritance due to the electricity savings.
Ultimately, I can’t blame Jon Ferry for this because he’s clearly a very stupid man, and this is the dream job of any free-market extremist moron who thinks that by virtue of saying and feeling something it must be true. No, the blame falls on the institution itself that has given such a senile propagandist the mouthpiece with which to extol his quarter-baked rants against rationality. Your publication is only one of many (though all owned by The Postmedia Network) in our new pseudo-Berlusconian state that fights against all that is tangible, rational, and true in this world. By purveying such radical right wing, agenda-driven drivel with increasing regularity, I can only conclude that you are waging intellectual warfare. You’re on.
With great contempt,
William R.D. Young
