I was reminded by an article in the paper yesterday about compact fluorescent bulbs. If you haven't already replaced all the old incandescent bulbs with these it is really time to do so.
Some facts:
These bulbs last 10,000 hours as opposed to the 1,000 hours for a regular incandescent bulb. The CFLs produce the same amount of light as an incandescent but at a fraction of the energy cost. It is estimated that over the 10,000 hour life of the bulb they will save you $50 in electricity.
If everyone in the country switched over to CFLs the estimate is that we would save $18 billion in electricity costs per year. That's a bunch.
Not only would we save a bucket of money we would eliminate the need for 80 coal fired power plants which would, in turn, reduce fossile fuel use by approximately 158 million tons per year.
Granted these new CFLs are expensive but they really are a good value and a real boon for the environment. You don't have to do it all at once but maybe one or two every pay day or even just replace one incandescent a month. Every little bit will help.
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