Flushing Out Trump’s Appliance Views

By Tom Ribe

   While many readers find Trump reprehensible, his place as the leader of the conservative movement in America and abroad makes even his most laughable views cause for deep concern. When he talks nonsense, his staff will twist themselves into pretzels to explain his views while his agency heads spring into action to put his “ideas” into federal policy. Recently he condemned energy efficient appliances at a campaign rally.

   Thus when he railed at his rally against energy efficient light bulbs, low-flow showers and toilets and dishwashers, it means his administration will probably take action to roll back energy saving standards that took decades for hundreds of people to put in place after years of research and development. It means Trump favors wasting energy and water and he favors the public wasting their paychecks on excessive water and electricity use. Hard to imagine this would be good for the “base” at his rally who cheered and laughed when he proposed raising the cost of running their households and increasing air pollution and natural disasters.

   Reducing the waste of electricity and petroleum across the economy is at the core of America’s effort to confront the global climate crisis. When we cut the amount of electricity we use, we can build fewer power plants be they coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind or solar. Power generation costs money and the public pays for it directly through rates and fees charged by utilities. It doesn’t make sense to build generation capacity for buildings that are wasting power on old fashioned appliances and lighting, no matter how much Don Trump pines for the appliances and lights of the 1960s.

   This is all lost on this president. While he thinks the incandescent light bulb technology that was invented in 1820 is attractive and cheap, in fact that technology costs far more for consumers, for utilities and ultimately the environment which must absorb the pollution from wasted energy.

   “They’re terrible. You look terrible. They cost you many, many times more. Like four or five times more,” said Don Trump about modern light bulbs. You would think a businessman could think about costs over time. Incandescent bulbs may only cost a dollar but they only last 6 months and they use seven times more power than an LED bulb which renders the same spectrum of light. And though the LED bulb costs four times more than the old fashioned bulb, it uses one fifth of the energy than an old fashioned light bulb and lasts far longer. Thus the cost of running incandescent bulbs over 20 years with 25,000 kilo watt hours of use will be $211 while doing the same work with LED bulbs will be $34.

  If Trump’s base wants to pay those direct costs to participate in his culture war against environmentalists and scientists, they are welcome. Both types of bulbs are available in stores. But the real costs lie in utility companies having to build more power plants, mine more coal, oil and gas, build more solar or wind or nuclear plants and exact damage to the environment with all of these. And Trump opposes wind and solar power generation and has promoted coal fired power plants which wreck the atmosphere with their carbon dioxide and other pollution.

   Ah Trump nostalgia. The old man and his nostalgia for his life growing  up in New York City with his multi millionaire father Fred and his private schools. Did Donald wash the dishes or pay for the light bulbs? I doubt Don has ever washed dishes after a meal in his entire life.

   The light bulb problem detailed above also applies to dishwashers that Trump condemned in his speech. “Remember the dishwasher, you’d press it. Boom — there’d be like an explosion. Five minutes later, you open it up, the steam pours out,” Trump said reminiscing about dishwashers that used more energy and water to wash and dry dishes of decades long past. “Now you press it 12 times. The women tell me, again. They give you like four drops of water,” he said.

   Putting aside that women are not the only ones in the kitchen in 2020, dishwashers are real energy wasters because they turn electricity into heat and this process is incredibly inefficient and old style dishwashers heat more water and use more electricity doing it. The element in the bottom that glows to dry dishes really makes your electricity meter spin.

   But here he seemed to be bothered by the lack of water in the dishwasher, which is a separate problem along with his stated dislike for toilets that use less water. While Donald may not care about wasting water because he lives in New York where water is apparently abundant, those of us out West care very much about water as all of us (outside of the coastal Pacific Northwest) face mounting water shortages, especially in populated areas of California, Arizona, Las Vegas and the Rocky Mountain states. The Colorado River which supplies southern California, Las Vegas and Arizona with water is shrinking away as climate change causes radical changes in the river’s watersheds.

   The toilets in Fred Trump’s house used 2.5 times more water than today’s toilets. Donald had bad experiences with toilets apparently. Perhaps his contractors at his various buildings and resorts put in poor quality appliances for him since he regularly failed to pay them or shorted them on the payments for contracted work.  You get what you pay for.

   Finally, Donald is obviously concerned about his personal experience with the light bulb or toilet as a narcissist (it’s all about him) and he seems oblivious to the fact that modern, improved appliances mean that appliances developed by Americans can compete on the international market where governments and consumers demand high efficiency standards.  The innovation involved in modernizing appliances creates economic activity… jobs and exports.

The good news is that a variety of polls show that the public accepts that climate change is real and caused by humans. The jury is still out on how much most Americans are willing to do about it in their personal lives.

Posted December 28,2019