No TV Party Tonight

CA may be having a massive fiscal and economic crisis, but that doesn't mean we can't continue to burnish our reputation as eco-nut fruitcakes. Consider the proposed ban on televisions of a certain size: California Targets TV's to Lower Electricity Demand

The most power-hungry television sets could soon be banned from store shelves in California as state energy regulators on Wednesday consider a first-in-the nation mandate intended to lower electricity demand.

If adopted, the regulations will require televisions sold in California to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement would be tougher in 2013, with only one-quarter of the TVs on the market currently meeting that standard.

Energy commissioners say TVs account for about 10 percent of a home's electricity use. The concern is that the energy draw will rise by as much as 8 percent a year as consumers buy larger televisions, add more to their homes and watch them longer.

Some manufacturers say implementing a power standard will cripple innovation, limit consumer choice and harm California retailers because consumers could simply buy TVs out of state or order them online.

The standards would apply to all TVs up to 58 inches, allowing increasing power use for larger TVs.

Someone call these guys and tell them that the impetus to combat "climate change" is slowing to a crawl because certain countries are not willing to cripple their economies for the sake of Greens living in La-La Land: How Copenhagen Died During barack Obama's Asian Trip. At this point, nothing short of an actual war (not a phony Carter-esque Moral Equivalent of War) will be enough to convince the Chinese that they should spend trillions of dollars to hobble their factories in pursuit of Al Gore's chimeras. I have it on good authority that Nobel Prizes, Oscars and even Grammies don't have the same hypnotic effect on the Chinese as they do on westerners.

Actually, it's a little surprising that the Chinese wouldn't want to go along with this. Global Warming/Climate Change is practically a bureaucrat's Permanent Employment Concession. Supposedly, Greens are the hip set, unlike all those oppressive Republicans and conservatives, but you would never see Sarah Palin or her acolytes declaring in all seriousness that they must pass laws regulating the type of televisions that we can have in our homes. It's unusual for American greens to be so open in aspiring to limit our freedom, even if it's the freedom to watch big-screen TV's. They must feel pretty comfortable in their sinecures.