The Southern Highland Reader

CULLOWHEE – L. Douglas Wilder, the first African-American elected governor in the United States, told a group of Western Carolina University students, faculty and staff that there is still progress to be made in terms of race relations, despite the historic election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.

Recent controversy over Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s comments that a light-skinned, articulate black was more palatable to white American voters provides evidence that America has not advanced as far as many may think, Wilder said Wednesday, Jan. 20.

In a talk titled “The Movement: Past, Present and Future” that was part of WCU’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration week activities, he spoke about the irony of Reid’s comments coming 20 years after Wilder’s own election as governor of Virginia – a state that once was the seat of the Confederate South.

“That election in 1989 seemed to signify that voters were ready to judge candidates not by the color of the skin, but by the content of their character,” Wilder said, borrowing a phrase from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. “Here today, Reid is saying that, 20 years later, we really haven’t crossed that threshold.”

Although Reid has since apologized to Obama for private remarks that were made public in the new book “Game Change” about the 2008 presidential election, he still needs to apologize to the rest of the country, Wilder said, calling the embattled politician’s statements among “the most dreadful comments in American political history” and “a slap in the face of the American people.”

Wilder reminded the audience that, throughout American history, progress typically has not been made through big, permanent changes. “It’s about small, consistent steps forward achieving that dream,” he said.

Wilder urged attendees to become aware of the false hopes and false steps that can derail efforts to strive for the American dream. “Don’t ignore your problems, hoping they’ll just go away,” he said. “Don’t think that if you just be patient and wait your turn, you’ll eventually get your time at the front of the line. And don’t think that only insiders know what’s best.”

He also warned against the impact of an increase in selfishness, violence and acceptance of mediocrity on the ability of today’s young people to continue to make progress. “What we need to do next is to not stop dreaming,” he said. “Barack Obama’s election has elicited the need for new dreams.”

Too many people today are quick to blame their problems on others, he said, telling the crowd that his mother constantly reminded him that he could do anything he set his mind to, and that his teachers never complained about a lack of resources.

The WCU event was sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and the Martin Luther King Jr. planning committee.

The New York Times asked a panel of columnists, including Western Carolina professor Bruce Henderson, just how parents should deal with the “Santa question”.

Henderson, whose research has largely been on the development of children’s curiosity and exploratory behavior, wrote, in part:

[In observation studies conducted at malls, my students] found that all too frequently parents, in their determination to give their children the Santa experience or to get a photo for the scrapbook, were insensitive to their children’s wariness or outright fear of the big man in the red suit. Smiling was rare, crying was not. Parents may act the Scrooge without realizing it.

Other columnists on the panel are psychologists and novelists, including Gregory Mone, author of “The Truth About Santa: Wormholes, Robots and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve.”

He writes, in part:

I don’t plan on supporting the notion that reindeer can fly or that Santa is immortal. Of course not. Both ideas are absurd. Instead, I’ll suggest that the reindeer are actually great jumpers, and that Santa probably has his organs replaced with artificial substitutes every decade to extend his lifespan far beyond the average human.

Read the Times piece here.

CULLOWHEE–In a letter published in this week’s Smoky Mountain News, Jeannette Evans, owner of Cullowhee’s Mad Batter and principal in the area transportation advocacy group Smart Roads, has a look at where the “southern loop” issue stands.

A clip:

A new bypass has enormous potential to drastically change our community’s traffic patterns, economy and landscape. Conversely, all the other projects located in the CTP are designed to improve and/or expand existing roads, thus improving current traffic patterns and preserving our landscape. DOT’s own modeling showed that the 107 Connector would not solve the congestion on N.C. 107 or at the intersection of Asheville Highway. It is primarily these congestion areas that are cited as reasons for building the 107 Connector.

Read her letter here.

CULLOWHEE–When outfitter Burt Kornegay, owner of Slickrock Expeditions, got an email from a friend inviting him to a save-the-Dillsboro-Dam shindig, he fired off a pithy response. Naturally, it was immediately shared all around the interwebs, where by complete happenstance it filtered all the way down to me.

Here it is, with his permission:

First, the note from his friend:

Yo, read all about it….

Saturday night there is a benefit in support of saving the Dillsboro Dam. So, all you anti-establishment, anti-Duke Power people come on down and catch the 7:30 set of singer-songwriter Barbara Duncan. If you’ve not heard her, you owe it to yourself to check this out and to have a few beers in the process, not to mention to support a good cause. So, let’s make Sat. eve. a party night and fill up Guadalupe (that also serves great food).

Hope to see you there …

Then, Burt’s response:

Hey, Partner, Hold on there!

Why do you say that fighting to keep the Dillsboro dam is “a good cause”?  Because doing so spites bad ole Duke?  Let’s not forget that the dam plugs up and drowns the Tuckaseegee River, halting the travel of river creatures and backing up an unnatural mile-long trough of deadwater behind it. Also, from a human perspective now, the dam stands in the way of creating a real, honest-to-goodness “river park” in Dillsboro.  By honest-to-goodness river park, I mean a park with a river that actually flows, like at East LaPorte (probably the most popular public place in our county).  A real river park would make a pleasurable place for all of us to go, and it would be good for businesses in Dillsboro too.  Hundreds of old concrete plugs like the Dillsboro dam are coming down all across the US,  cheered on by river-loving and civic-minded people just like yourself, and I say, Right On!

As for your rebel claim that it is “anti-establishment” to fight for the dam, because doing so is anti-Duke, I say, wasn’t the dam built by the county’s moneyed “establishment” in the first place, back when other segments of the local “establishment” were as busy as beavers gnawing out railroad lines, felling the virgin forest, and turning the Tuckaseegee into flowing mud?  I mean, what could be more “establishment” than a dam?  (Well, perhaps a skyscraper or aircraft carrier.)  And what could be more “establishment” than to align yourself with the likes of county manager Ken “Dam or Die” Westmoreland, who doesn’t mind taxing us to the tune of more than a quarter-million-$ to pay lawyers, in his attempts to do  .  . . what?  Why, to milk still more $ from Duke! When it comes to the Dillsboro dam, the “anti-” lies in taking it down.

Kornegay’s longtime Jackson County business has been the focus of some media features lately. Here and here from the Smoky Mountain News, for example. The Sylva Herald has also written him up (you can search that story at their paid archives, here).

Recent news from the legal struggle over the dam from the Sylva Herald here (link will expire in one week), and from the Smoky Mountain News here.

SYLVA–Editorially, the Sylva Herald newspaper has been openly disdainful of the Jackson County Commissioners’ ongoing battle with Duke Energy over the fate of the century-old Dillsboro Dam.

It editorializes on the subject this week. Here’s an excerpt:

Recently we taxpayers have been asked to bear quite a burden for our county’s leaders. First they forced through revaluation right before the housing market crashed. Now we’re paying taxes based on land values that are much inflated over current market value. They then turned around and instituted a pay study by the Mercer Group that resulted in major raises for several county employees. The amount of some of those raises nearly equals the average yearly salary for Jackson County residents. Yet the taxpayers haven’t gotten a single “thank you” for footing the bill.

The editorial is available here for a short while, then afterwards at the Herald’s paid archive.

WAYNESVILLE–The Smoky Mountain News wraps up coverage of 11th district rep. Heath Shuler’s misadventure with the Tennessee Valley Authority with this news story, from reporter Giles Morris and an editorial.

Morris’s lead for the news story:

While Congressman Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, was cleared two weeks ago by the House Ethics Committee of any wrongdoing related to a Tennessee real estate deal, controversy erupted again a week later when the Tennessee Valley Authority released a report that showed he’d been lying to the media for months.

The lead from today’s editorial:

Now that it’s clear that Rep. Heath Shuler, D-Waynesville, did indeed mislead everyone about his involvement in a land deal that one of his companies negotiated with the Tennessee Valley Authority, constituents will be forced to make a character judgment that could stick for the rest of his political career.

STATEWIDE–The Charlotte Observer’s Jack Betts has a look at the challenges facing the decade-old Golden LEAF fund; the non-profit formed to dole out North Carolina’s share of the national tobacco settlement.

An excerpt:

In its one decade of existence, Golden LEAF has sometimes inspired its supporters with potentially transformative initiatives such as $100 million for a manufacturing facility at the Global TransPark in Kinston for aerospace component fabrication.

And it has infuriated its detractors by doling out money in ways that remind them of nothing so much as political slush funds financed with public money. A recent critical report from State Auditor Beth Wood flayed the organization for its inability to produce minutes of meetings, criticized its ethics practices, faulted it for making a spending decision in closed session and blasted its refusal to fully cooperate with auditors. At one point an auditor was escorted out of a Golden LEAF file room that auditors had been given access to, prompting suspicions the foundation was trying to hide something.

Read the entire piece here.

STATEWIDE–The Charlotte Observer editorialized today that Gov. Bev Perdue has done good things to make state government more trustworthy and transparent, but that when it comes to the NC Department of Transportation board – a notorious gathering spot for high-dollar political contributors – “some things never change”.

Here’s an excerpt:

Perdue’s approach was to change the Board of Transportation from a decision-making board with the power to approve highway and other transportation projects to a planning board where members could not use their influence to channel roads, bridges or intersections to benefit themselves or their associates. That’s a significant improvement over the old system, which all but invited the board to reward its members, though it still means members make decisions about planning.

But Perdue’s plan did not alter one time-honored, if that’s the right adjective, tradition. She still appoints campaign contributors to the Board of Transportation. Last week she named five members to the board: Sam Halsey of Jefferson, David Burns of Laurinburg, Gary Ciccone of Fayetteville, Ronnie Wall of Burlington and Stan White of Nags Head. All are accomplished business and civic leaders. And election records show all have been contributors to Perdue’s campaigns, though not all in large amounts.

Read the editorial here.

REGIONAL–The Hendersonville Times News, along with the Knoxville News Sentinel, have followed closely 11th District Congressman Heath Shuler’s real estate misadventure involving the TVA in east Tennessee.

The Times News warned early on that even the appearance of influence-peddling in real estate matters would recall memories of Shuler’s predecessor, Republican Charles Taylor.

In a Friday editorial, the Times News “wraps the thing up neatly, and says Shuler’s damage in this case is self-inflicted.

Here’s the lead:

CHATTANOOGA–David Uchiyama at the Chattanooga Times Free Press writes about the legacy of Stephen Curry, who earned all-America stripes while leading tiny Davidson to the elite eight of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Curry left Davidson a year early, was drafted way up the NBA list, and now plays for Golden State.

Uchiyama talked to multiple SoCon coaches for the piece, which discusses Curry’s impact on the league.

A snip:

“Players like that graduate, he just went a year early,” Western Carolina coach Larry Hunter said. “Somebody else is going to fill those shoes this year, next year or down the road.

“Hopefully for the conference, there will be a few and they’ll come quick.”

Read the whole piece here.

BALSAM–Blogger “Gulahiyi” holds forth on whether the internet is storytelling’s bane. His references, as always,  are broad-ranging.

An excerpt:

I know it is tempting to blame the Internet for the death of narrative. But is it really that simple? Any loquacious blowhard can satisfy the desire to tell stories…without the assistance of new technologies. But for a soft-spoken recluse such as myself the Internet provides an opportunity to share stories that would otherwise go untold. If it weren’t for this computer screen, I’d just be talking to the walls. Some might count that reason enough to condemn the Internet. It’s not for me to say.

Like it or not, change happens.

Read the entire post here.

REGIONAL–Asheville Citizen-Times editorial page editor and columnist Jim Buchanan (a Sylva native) notes in a Sunday column that North Carolina was recently named number one in the nation in terms of its business climate by Site Selection, an economic development magazine.

It’s the eighth time in nine years that the tarheel state has been so named.

Buchanan points out that the warm-hearth economic climate is limited to certain parts of the state.

An excerpt:

North Carolina’s business climate, it seems, is a lot like its … well, climate. Different parts of the state have markedly different weather. And looking at the Site report, it seems the same applies to business weather.

In the Charlotte/Raleigh corridor and the Research Triangle area, the business climate is blindingly beautiful. Business partnerships with universities and colleges are humming along, and the area has transitioned well from the tobacco/textiles/furniture economy to finance, medical and energy concerns.

<snip>

No silver bullet solution to the economic downturn or economic unevenness came out of our board conversation. Instead, many familiar issues and questions resurfaced, like the geographical and transportation challenges that are unique to the mountains. And frankly, blue-skying about economic development is fine, but that’s down the road. The task at hand for our leaders in a time of rolling credit crisis, high unemployment and an era of want most of us have never witnessed in our lifetimes is to simply make sure the social fabric doesn’t rip clean apart.

Read the whole piece here.

CULLOWHEE–Western Carolina University political science professors Gibbs Knotts and Christopher Cooper took a close look at the state of political awareness and participation on NC campuses in this Saturday column for the Charlotte Observer.

Here’s the lead:

It is well-established that young people vote at lower levels than others in the electorate. For example, approximately 40 percent of 20-year-olds voted in the 2004 presidential election, compared to a turnout rate of more than 70 percent for those in their 70s.

Fortunately, there are some indications that the times may be changing. Youth turnout during the 2008 primaries was significantly higher than it has been in the past. Young people also are getting involved with campaigns at higher rates than ever before, and early voting data provides some indication that youth turnout in 2008 will be at its highest level in recent memory.

Read the whole piece here.

RALEIGH–Avram Friedman, Sylva resident and Executive Director of the clean air activist organization the Canary Coalition was one of six protestors arrested last weekend at the North Carolina governor’s mansion in Raleigh.

Here’s a brief piece from the Raleigh News and Observer.

Below is an essay from Friedman titled “Why I chose to be arrested”:

On Saturday, October 24 there were thousands of demonstrations around the world, in more than 130 nations, millions of people, gathering to focus attention on the climate catastrophe unfolding in our lifetimes. About two hundred years ago, prior to the industrial revolution, the earth’s atmosphere contained roughly 270 parts per million of carbon dioxide. The worldwide scientific community has reached virtual consensus that to avoid major disruption to life-support systems there needs to be a sustained level of less than 350 parts per million of C02. But, today, due largely to the burning of fossil fuels in industrial processes and transportation, the level of C02 has risen to 390. If we don’t act quickly to change our methods and our habits, we are risking the viability of life as we know it on this earth.

In North Carolina, we have a special mission because this state is the home of Duke Energy, one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases in the world. And while more than 100 new coal-burning power plants have been canceled over the past three years in the United States of America, due to climate, pollution and economic concerns, Duke Energy is going full-steam ahead with construction of its mammoth 800 megawatt Unit 6 at Cliffside, in Rutherford County, about 50 miles west of Charlotte.

We have to be working on a plan to phase out all 14 existing utility-owned coal-burning power plants in North Carolina in the next decade or less, along with all coal plants everywhere. But, to begin construction on a new coal plant at this late hour is a form of extreme psychological denial.

Flying in the face of logic and reason, almost like a spiteful and willful child, Jim Rogers and Duke Energy continue construction at Cliffside. Construction at Cliffside continues even though energy consumption in North Carolina is declining and will continue to decline into the foreseeable future due to advancements in energy efficiency and due to conservation efforts.

Even though the latest report by the U.S. Geological Survey reveals that national retrievable coal reserves are diminishing rapidly and the cost of coal will inevitably soon rise beyond practical economical thresholds, construction at Cliffside continues.

Despite the fact that North Carolina has vast wind energy resources and the cost of building large-scale wind projects is lower per megawatt than building coal plants, with far fewer health, environmental and economic liabilities, construction at Cliffside continues.

Despite the fact that North Carolina has tremendous solar energy potential with the cost of solar technology diminishing on almost a daily basis, Duke Energy continues to feed precious financial resources into an outdated and horribly polluting technology at Cliffside.

Despite the fact that burning coal has saturated the environment with mercury, causing fetal brain damage, autism and learning disabilities in children; burning coal is causing acid rain, killing the biodiversity of our mountainous, forested and agricultural regions; burning coal is responsible for deadly high ozone levels causing asthma, emphysema, bronchitis, heart disease and early death for tens of thousands of people each year, Duke energy continues construction at Cliffside.

Despite diminishing fresh water supplies to feed a growing population in the region, Duke Energy continues to build a power plant that will use millions of gallons of water each day, and alter the temperature of water used for cooling, threatening habitat and life-support systems downstream of the plant.

Despite wind-blown coal-burning waste ash piles, failed slurry pond dams, massive and catastrophic toxic spills, despite the devastation of mountaintop removal coal mining, construction at Cliffside has relentlessly continued.

Despite federal law and court decisions regulating carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, and despite the fact that Cliffside Unit 6 will produce 6 million tons of CO2 each year, for the next fifty years, as much as a million cars, yet construction at Cliffside continues.

Like an undisciplined and spoiled child, used to getting whatever it wants, despite the deepest recession since the Great Depression, when people are having to make choices between paying rent, buying food or buying medicine, Duke Energy stamps its feet and demands that the Utilities Commission raise electrical rates to pay for an utterly unnecessary and wasteful power plant at Cliffside so it can sell more energy to increase its profits by expanding its area of monopoly into new territories.

One would think that given the weight of all these reasons to stop Cliffside that our public servants in the state government would rise to the occasion to protect the citizenry from this destructive, childish behavior. That’s their job, isn’t it? After all, Beverley Perdue, during her campaign to be elected Governor of North Carolina spoke out against the construction of the Cliffside power plant.

But, something happened between then and now. About three-quarters of a million dollars in campaign contributions made its way into the electoral process from the utility industry. In 2008, Beverly Purdue’s campaign alone received about $26,000 from The Duke Energy Political Action Committee and donations directly from Duke Energy executive officers. Since then, Governor Perdue has dropped her opposition to Cliffside. Business-as-usual politics, I suppose.

But, these are not business-as-usual times and we can’t allow a set of disproportionate campaign contributions destroy our children’s future. So, on October 24, 2009, about 150 demonstrators delivered a message to the Perdue Administration that she has a greater obligation than fulfilling the every wish and dream of Duke Energy. She has a responsibility to the people of North Carolina to protect public health and the environment by beginning to phase out all coal plants in this state, starting with Cliffside. She has an obligation to stand up to Duke Energy and say “This madness stops now!” She has an obligation to come out of hiding and meet with members of the environmental community to discuss steps to effectively address climate change and energy issues. She has an obligation to exercise vision and work with others to plan a future that is sustainable, replete with high-paying green technology jobs, clean air and water, renewable energy deployment, wind farms, solar roofs, economic incentives for investment in efficiency. She has an obligation to dramatically reduce North Carolina’s carbon footprint. She has an obligation to stop Cliffside. She has an obligation to represent the public interest.

The demonstration in Raleigh, on October 24, was coordinated by Greenpeace and NC WARN with support from the Canary Coalition, Clean Air Carolina, Clean Water for NC, NC Green Party, NC Fair Share, NC Progressive Democrats and Southern Energy Network.

Six people, Dick Paddock of Chapel Hill; Jean Larson of Asheville, Keval Kaur Khalsa of Durham; John Allen, a UNC-Chapel Hill student from Winston-Salem, Jim Warren of Efland and myself, Avram Friedman, of Sylva, with the support of 150 demonstrators across the street, chose to deliver this message through non-violent civil disobedience, by crossing a police line in front of the Governor’s mansion, on Blount Street, in Raleigh. For some of us it was the second arrest this year. I want to thank the Capital Police for their professional behavior in peacefully and respectfully arresting us. I guess many of them have children too.

Series: cliffside, Duke rate hikes

STATEWIDE–The Progressive Pulse notes today that North Carolina employees will soon be tested randomly at their jobs for tobacco use as part of the new state health plan.

Writes Chris Fitzsimon:

Wonder what is next, maybe a sample of brain tissue so insurance companies and employers can try to predict behavior in the workplace?

Read his post here.

SYLVA–Don’t get me wrong, I like lists, too. In fact, I remember a teenage addiction to that eighties phenomenon called “The Book of Lists“.

But these days, when publications have less and less money but reader’s appetites for content are growing leaps and bounds, the lists come at you from every direction. US News and World Report, for example, which was a weekly news staple when I was a kid, is now a monthly publication that seems sometimes wholly devoted to lists of schools, hospitals and whatnot.

Sylva and Cullowhee made a couple of lists recently. Cullowhee got a controversial edge over Boone and Asheville in North Carolina as a “better sports town” in the Sporting News, and Sylva was named by the Mother Earth News as one of 11 “Great Places You’ve (Maybe) Never Heard Of”.

The Sporting News list ranks 399 “sports cities” in the U.S., using a methodology that is vague at best. That aside, the upshot is a 199th-place finish for good ol’ Cullowhee, 15 spots ahead of Asheville and 26 ahead of Boone. The howls of wonderment from the Asheville Citizen-Times sports desk will likely brings wails of  self-defense from Western, all amounting to a tempest in a teapot.

Update: Citizen-Times sports editor Bob Berghaus back-pedaled like a slow cornerback today, publishing parts of an op-ed from WCU’s Gibbs Knotts and arriving at the conclusion, more or less, that maybe Cullowhee is a great sports burg, who knows?

Sylva, meanwhile, is unaccustomed to the limelight. The Reader’s home base is a busy working town, described, out of context, by Edward Abbey as having “the life of a market center and the dignity of a county seat”. You can get just about anything you need on Sylva’s Main Street, from fresh-brewed beer to fresh-roasted coffee to fresh-baked bread to fresh fish. You can still get shoes fixed here, and the downtown dentist’s family has been at the same trade in the same place for well over a century.

But in this pre-packaged age, Sylva doesn’t fit the mold of a “destination” (a surprise to its many visitors), so the tourism folks don’t circulate its name much.

Of course, the Mother Earth News isn’t all that concerned with tourism. Here’s what it said about Sylva, which was one of two southern towns to make its list:

“Sylva embodies a vibrant small town that engages its citizenry in a variety of ways,” said John Rockhold, managing editor for the magazine. “Mother Earth News focuses on cool things you can do to live wisely and create community, and we think our readers will identify with a place like Sylva.”

Read about Sylva in the Mother Earth News here.

REGIONAL–Asheville Citizen-Times op-ed contributor Kim MacQueen makes a pitch for the importance of town centers, using Asheville as an example.

She writes:

Despite their size, locally-owned businesses offer benefits to our communities that big-box stores simply cannot:

• Local flavor.
• Contributions to the local economy.
• Money spent in locally-owned businesses stays in the community.
• Donations to charities at more than twice the rate of national chains.

She also writes what the community needs to continue to improve:

• Continued support from the city government and Chamber of Commerce.
• To understand the problems with downtown are problems for all of us.
• To make a commitment to shop downtown and support local merchants …
• Those of us who live and work downtown have a responsibility to sustain our neighborhood, keeping it vital and attractive.

Read the specifics of her arguments here.

STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer editorializes on the recent, near unanimous decision of the State Board of Community Colleges to allow undocumented immigrants into state community colleges.

Here’s the N&O’s lead:

You might think such a move would be easy and popular, but it wasn’t easy and this particular change may not be widely supported, at least right away. Opposition to admitting illegal immigrants to community colleges has become a flashpoint issue in North Carolina, and Republican officials, joined by Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, immediately criticized the 18-member State Board of Community Colleges for its near-unanimous decision. (Dalton, who has a seat on the board, was the lone “no” vote.)

Here’s hoping, however, that the logic of the board’s action and its carefully crafted nature will cool the most overheated of the opposition. North Carolinians are fair-minded people, and the decision the community college board has taken is fair to all. If anything, it is tougher on the young people involved than are the policies of most states.

Here’s the rest of the column.

STATEWIDE–Jack Betts at the Charlotte Observer writes that Governor Bev Perdue and Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton endanger their legacies as leaders in education by wavering on the matter of undocumented immigrants in North Carolina colleges.

Writes Betts:

Democrats such as Perdue and Dalton generally hold in high regard the views of a former education governor such as Jim Hunt or a lion of American higher education such as Bill Friday. But on the issue of illegal immigrants in public colleges, their view is more in line with Republicans in the legislature who hope to push legislation next year to prohibit the admission of undocumented students.

Read his entire blog post here.

CULLOWHEE–David Henderson, a professor of environmental ethics at WCU, went to bat for light bulb choice in the Washington Post yesterday, arguing that forced use of compact fluorescent bulbs isn’t such a bright way to achieve green progress.

The story has generated over 100 reader comments.

Here’s an excerpt:

The environmental benefits of using only compact fluorescent bulbs are indirect — and less than what could be realized by changing standards governing, for example, coal use. Consider: The benefit of “reducing inefficiency” depends on where the energy is coming from. Improving efficiency without eliminating a harmful source may just free energy that is then used elsewhere. If there is no net reduction in energy use, where is the benefit? Direct regulation of harmful activities, such as putting firm limits on carbon emissions, is more likely to achieve the desired environmental result. (And this would only indirectly influence my bedroom decor.) A great deal of the wasted energy in lighting comes from excessive nighttime lighting in public spaces, which is an excellent issue for government to address. Banning traditional light bulbs as used in private homes seems an effort in the name of environmental protection that has very little payoff.

Here’s Henderson’s piece.