California’s Big Screen Ban Both Hated And Relatively Pointless
September 21st, 2009 9:31 AM | by Steve Anderson | 1 Comment
So in case you haven’t heard, Californian gadget buffs, there’s a push on in Sacramento to ban certain types of big screen TV that use too much energy. Of course, by “certain types”, I mean roughly a quarter of all TVs in production today and every single plasma TV over sixty inches. Needless to say, the people are not happy about this, and small businesses are firing back also, but perhaps the worst news came today with a simple pronouncement from Wired Magazine’s Gadget Lab that declared that such a law would be useless within two years, as “energy hogging TVs” would be gone by then anyway, thrown over in favor of LCD and “greener” TVs.
Basically, California’s planning to blow a bunch of money it doesn’t have to make a law it can’t enforce that’ll be rendered moot in two years anyway when the kind of TV it would ban can’t be found on the market.
Way to go, California legislature! Best start checking the want ads–come November I’d be plenty of you will be run out on a rail.
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1. We are only banning televisions produced in 2011 or beyond that consume ridiculous amounts of energy. There are already energy efficient versions of every type, so nobody is going to even notice when shopping.
2. The regulations only apply to tvs that are smaller than 58 inches, so he’s really just making things up.
3. And that’s the whole idea, that we move the market towards energy efficient technologies, but we are putting the regulations in place just in case the market doesn’t take care of the problem