The World in 2030

The World in 2030 143
or which can be recycled to save the use of virgin resources?
Have you replaced your wasteful incandescent electric
light bulbs with energy-saving bulbs? You should – here’s
what the magazine New Scientist wrote on the subject in
March 2007:
Western governments are gunning for the humble
light bulb because it wastes huge amounts of energy.
First to propose calling time was the state of California:
on 31 January it unveiled the ‘How Many Legislators
Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb Act’,
which, if passed, will ban the bulbs by 2012. Three
weeks later, Australia announced a plan to do likewise.
This month the UK government promised to
phase them out by 2011. 281
Of course many people have aesthetic objections to
today’s energy-efficient light bulbs. But new LED-based
lights (mostly made from plastics) are arriving to widen
the range of alternatives to the standard 100-year-old
incandescent bulb.
Have you honestly worked to make your home as energyefficient
as possible? In ‘Heat’, George Monbiot makes
the following observation about British energy efficiency
compared with other countries in Europe:
Houses which meet the building codes in Norway
and Sweden use around one quarter of the energy of
houses meeting the standards in England and Wales.
In fact, the building regulations in Sweden were
tougher in 1978 than they are in Britain today. In