ban the bulb

Japan is the latest country to introduce a ban on inefficient incandescent light bulbs following the likes of Cuba, Venezuela, Australia and Ireland. Much to our delight, the Japanese government is keen to move from incandescent bulbs to energy-saving compact fluorescent ones to reduce carbon emissions and energy use. Why can’t our own government take inspiration from these countries and ban power hungry bulbs for good? The global trend is moving from conventional technologies to more eco-friendly ones as we saw in the case of Ireland where the incandescent bulb was banned a couple weeks ago. If we were to ban power crazy bulbs here we would cut our carbon emissions by 5 million tonnes.

Good news on the energy conservation front - Ireland will be the first EU country to ban energy-wasting incandescent lightbulbs.

The Irish government announced today that, as part of its national Carbon budget, the old-style power hungry bulbs will be banned from 2009. Greenpeace congratulates the Ireland on its decision to lead the world in this simple but essential step in tackling climate change.

From the Rainbow Warrior, which is in India to highlight the impacts of climate change and what we can do to stop it. You can follow all the tour updates on the Ban the Bulb blog, and we'll be posting tour highlights here.

I've never wanted to be a celebrity, always loved my anonymity, so being welcomed to Sagar Island by 12,000 people was a bit overwhelming.

We sailed from Kolkata at three in the morning so by noon we were well down the Hugli and approaching the Bay of Bengal. The "meeting", as it was described to us, to welcome the Rainbow Warrior to Sagar Island was due to start in the early afternoon and the Warrior was still a few hours away. We launched two inflatable boats to take us to the northern tip of the island and we would go the rest of the way by jeep to beat the ship to the Sagar Ganges beach.

I'm in Calcutta! Wow, what a mad place - dodging traffic, choked pavements, goat herding in the city centre, streets filled with sleeping bodies at night, fantastic food, friendly people - it is a little overwhelming.

I'm here for the next month helping out the India office and I'll be joining the Rainbow Warrior when it arrives in Calcutta, or Kolkata as it is now known. We'll be sailing down the coast to look at the impacts of climate change and what can be done in India to stop it.

Something that drives me nuts is when people use the example of developing economies such as China or India as an excuse for inactivity on climate change - the "what's the bloody point" argument, which insists that any savings we might make in CO2 emissions using renewables will be more than cancelled out by their use of dirty energy. It's not that there's not an element of truth in this - it's the refusal to recognise that we in the west have any influence or responsibility in the matter. After all, a key driver in India and China's rapid development is our insatiable demand for insanely cheap products - which forces them to use the clapped out and dirty technlogies we are trying to break away from.