My disparaging remarks about a Fox News report on compact fluorescent lightbulbs in the July/August mailbag brought a flood of comments, many of them defending Fox against my purportedly mean-spirited, angry, and divisive attitude. Here is a sampling of those responses:
Hey Mr. Green,
Before you rant that anyone with a different point of view from yours is demented, you should check out not only the condition of your own brain but also the depth of your knowledge and the sources of your information. ---Marilyn in New York
Hey Mr. Green,
If you had been less snide and less concerned with attacking Fox, you might have been more convincing in defending the environmental benefits of compact fluorescent lightbulbs. I am legitimately concerned about the existence of mercury in CFLs, which you downplay and the Sierra Club appears to be trying to minimize. --Jonathan in Endicott, New York
Hey Mr. Green,
Your recent response to the inquiry about the safety of compact fluorescent lightbulbs reminds me why I let my membership in the Sierra Club lapse. I suggest that if this involved something other than CO2 buildup, you would have difficulty seeing the positive in adding to the already increasing environmental load of mercury. It is hard for me to see how this discussion makes the case for CFLs. --Brice in Berkeley, California
Hey Mr. Green,
Wow. There are people who care about the environment and aren't brain-damaged right-wingers, but aren't off-the-edge lefties either! I am a [Sierra Club] member and listen to Fox News. Stick to the facts and don't try to run off those of us who aren't so near the edge. --Clare
Hey Mr. Green,
It was quite disappointing to see Mr. Green exhibit his ignorant, narrow-minded bigotry by his discourteous name-calling and unfair bashing of Fox News. Although they could have presented their article a little differently, it was factual. As you may already know, Fox News is probably the most accurate news source on television, and they do make an honest attempt to present opposing views, which is refreshing, since most networks peddle their own.
But people like Mr. Green obviously do not want to hear the truth unless it is consistent with their own biased views and distorted beliefs. It is disappointing to see that the Sierra Club allows such inaccurate propaganda and stupid insults to appear in its publication. --Michael in Coldspring, Texas
Hey everybody,
Well, now, I never dreamed of being in the same predicament as Fox's poor old Bill O'Reilly, who is so often accused of being a narrow-minded, bigoted, and discourteous name-caller.
But I'm not sure that challenging Fox News makes anybody an "off-the-edge leftie." The network has been criticized by plenty of people who are miles away from the leftist fringe, as can be seen in interviews with mainstream journalists who rip Fox in Robert Greenwald's documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.
Moreover, since Fox's headline reads "Junk Science: Light Bulb Lunacy," meaning it thinks fluorescent bulb advocates are bad scientists and nutcases, tweaking Fox for brain damage from mercury poisoning seems fair enough. I certainly didn't mean to offend anybody but Fox News, though the network's many dedicated viewers seemed to take my jabs personally. But come on, folks. Listing the EPA's detailed instructions on how to clean up a broken fluorescent bulb isn't "downplaying" the toxic problem of mercury in said bulbs. (In fact, I've harped incessantly on the need to recycle them).
This didn't satisfy some readers, who argued that the "difficult" cleanup procedures only go to show that fluorescents are too dangerous.
My advocacy of fluorescents is not motivated solely by concern about carbon dioxide emissions. It seems to me that what's getting lost in the debate about global warming is the basic fact that we ought to be (and easily could be) using a lot less fossil fuels anyway. Fossil fuels pollute the water and air and do tremendous environmental damage in many ways. (To name a few: the destruction of entire mountaintops in West Virginia, the polluting of streams with coal slurry, wrecks and leaks from oil tankers, gas and oil residues in streams, forests harmed by acid rain from power-plant emissions, drilling threats to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and oil-driven urban sprawl.)
On top of this, the very fact that the fossil-fuel supply is finite ought to make us consume it more prudently-something we recognized more than 30 years ago during the energy crisis, when we doubled fuel efficiency in cars, but soon forgot, thanks to the malignant efforts of the energy and auto czars.
Finally, profligate use of fossil fuels shifts capital away from more essential and practical investments. In a sense, wasteful burning of fossil fuel is like burning money. Some would argue that if we didn't waste so much money igniting gasoline in the SUVs we drive across bridges, there might be more capital left to fix those structures.
Environmentally,
Mr. Green
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