Bulb revolution sweeps into Argentina

Another country is well on the way to making the switch as last week Argentina joined the rapidly growing list of nation states getting ready to use only energy efficient light bulbs.

If the Argentinean president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner gets her way, by the end of 2010 mandatory efficiency standards will be introduced which will effectively ban incandescent bulbs. Better yet, she said her decision came as a direct result of the campaign run by our office in Buenos Aires.

And earlier this year, Italy followed Ireland's example to become the second EU country to propose similar efficiency standards and is also expected to remove incandescents from sale in 2010. All these bulb bans are a small but vital step in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, and introducing minimum energy efficiency standards on all electrical equipment has to be the ultimate goal.

Yet we still don't have any such standards set by law in this country. Joan Ruddick is the parliamentary under-secretary with special responsibilities for climate change and so is in a position to do something about it - drop her a line and tell her that our government might think it's leading the way on climate change, but the facts paint a different story.