The Green Movement is like so many other movements… a pendulum swing that swings wide and way beyond its average position. Going Green is not as easy as it sounds. Take the idea of light bulbs. Those simple little glass orbs were once the object of my amazement. I lived in Detroit where the power company… Detroit Edison would swap out your light bulbs for free if you’d bring in a broken one. I remember standing in front of the huge bins of bulbs where you could pick out whatever size you wanted in exchange for the broken or burned out ones you brought in. 50 watt, 75 watt and my favorite, the 100 watt monsters, they were all there. No such thing as the sissy 25 watt bulbs in those bins, no sir. Electricity was cheap and we lit up the house like it was the middle of the day.

All was well for quite a few decades and now along comes the ‘greenies’ to tell us that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. Hey… that’s what I’m breathing out for crying out loud! And they tell us that those beautiful glass orbs I’ve been so fond of are now a hazard to the environment because they use more precious electricity and create heat in the process. They tell us to get rid of these so we can save money. I wonder???

So what is the alternative? Well, after we shut down a few US Light bulb plants and lay off a few thousand American Factory Workers, we can now buy the Mercury filled curlicue bulbs from China. Be careful lest you break one of these new sissy bulbs. They’re filled with Mercury and God knows what exotic gas or compound to the extent that we are told to open all the windows in the house and let it air out well lest we inhale the dreaded Mercury and cut our lives short. Wait a minute… doesn’t opening all the windows in the home for a few hours during the summer end up requiring a lot of extra air conditioning? Or in the winter, doesn’t it require a lot more furnace activity? What about all the dreaded Carbon Dioxide being created in the process of venting the Mercury out of your house? Who’s writing all these requirements, the guys from “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”?

For now, I’m buying up all the incandescent bulbs I can find, stockpiling them in a secret warehouse and I’ll be selling them on the black market in another 10 years to make a fortune.

Until then, I keep my roof painted white to reflect heat. It lowers my air conditioning costs and makes my AC work a lot less. I’m saving money and doing the “Green Thing” my own way because it helps me be more comfortable in my own home. And I’m trying not to exhale too much so I don’t increase the world’s concentration of Carbon Dioxide.