A few weeks ago, I read a story about a California lawmaker who wanted to ban the sales of incandescent lightbulbs through all of California by 2012. His bill even had a cute name:the “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act”.

When I first read about this I thought that this was a nice idea, but left it at that. It was just a bill. Probably one of hundreds or thousands that various legislators were offering. So, I didn’t really think too much about it.

Then, all of a sudden, yesterday, Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources announced that Australia was banning all incandescent light bulbs by 2010.

There aren’t many details available on this plan, but, from what I can tell, this is not a theoretical bill being proposed by a legislator — this is a done deal. It is as if the EPA decided tommorow to regulate the energy industry and forced them to eliminate the bulbs.

What is even more amazing is that this is coming from a country that rivals the U.S. in terms of its “head in the sand” mentality about global warming. Australia is one of the only other major nations who hasn’t signed on to the Kyoto pact and Australia Prime Minister John Howard has not been a big supporter of change.

So what happened? Why the big change now?

Elections.

You see Australia has elections coming up this year and Prime Minister Howard faces a very tough fight against the liberal Labor party.

And one of the key issues in the election is water.

The Australian government is being forced to contend with the fact that Australia could be facing devastating effects from global warming and is now having to come up with solutions to try to avert the crisis.

According to an article in an Australian paper:

Polls have shown that many voters blame the drought that is racking Australia, by some measures the worst in more than a century, on global warming. It has focused critical attention on the Howard government’s environmental record, including his refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

One of Howard’s moves to placate the left was to shake up his cabinet and install Turnbull as a minister less than a month ago.

It will be interesting to see if this starts to have a ripple effect elsewhere. Will the California bill get a sudden boost? Will other countries start to look to ban incandescent light bulbs as well?

I think the most important message out of all of this is that change happens when the populace wakes up and demands change. There is no way that Howard would be paying attention to this if he wasn’t at risk of losing his job. He’d just continue to bury his head in the sand. But, now that his job is on the line, he’s suddenly acting.  A lesson for us all.
Cool Note of the Day

As I was researching this article, I found that Australia’s “Shadow Minister for Climate Change” is Peter Garrett. Who is Peter Garrett you ask? He’s none other than the lead singer from Midnight Oil. You remember him? The kinda freaky looking bald guy with the funky voice.