Why can’t CFLs come cheap?
Published: Sep 30, 2007
Photo: Prasad
Abstract: Drift through any prominent do’s of the city and pose a few CFL questions to the elite and environment conscious. Watch the proud smile spreading across their faces claiming they use only compact fluorescent lights as it can save the world from greenhouse gas emissions. The link no doubt is well established and the rich and famous have found a new expensive toy to show off how aware and concerned they are about the future of the earth. But with a rising inequality in incomes, poor India can barely afford a light bulb let alone a CFL. Starting at about Rs. 100 for standard illumination requirement, for almost all branded CFL, it is way beyond the Rs 10 that a two-square-meal-earning citizen dish out for an edisonian bulb. If we are so sure that the energy efficient CFL will translate into substantial energy savings and bring down emissions levels then we should address its pricing regiment so that every Indian is able to afford a CFL without debt pangs.
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A plant that lives for two years, generally germinating and producing leaves in the first year, to flower and produce seeds (and then die) in the second year.
The offspring of a cross between individuals of different genotypes. Hybrids may be intraspecific (parents from the same species) of interspecific (parents from different species). Most hybrid plants and animals are infertile (sterile).
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A logarithmic scale numbered from 0 to 14 for expressing acidity or alkalinity. A pH of 7.0 indicates neutrality, below 7 is acidic, and above 7 is alkaline.
The study of the plant and animal life which has left its records as fossils in the stratigraphic record – the layers of rock and sediment laid down over geological time. It includes analyses of plant and animal from, growth and development, of evolutionary changes; and of the relationship of all these factors to environmental variations with time.
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