The Environmental Protection Agency is, in general, like every other government agency. They are in a more or less constant search for ways to perpetuate their own existence. They create rules that start to achieve results. Once the targets of their rule making show signs of meeting a goal, they come down the pike with ever-tightening standards, sometimes creating more problems than they cure. "Hey, gang, let's regulate something!"

Often they try to mandate something into existence. Those of you with late-80s and early 90s cars with paint peeling off in sheets know how those mandates work. By making the older automotive finishes illegal before the newer, less-polluting ones were perfected, the auto industry was compelled to use an inferior product.

No attention was given to paint manufacturers that said these newer, more environmentally friendly finishes were not yet perfected, nor was the application process. The EPA took the attitude that no change would ever come unless a rule was rammed through because the big bad nasty corporations would drag their heels.

You ended up with a bad paint job, the car maker ended up with a customer relations disaster not of their own making. The only one who was happy was the regulator sitting behind a desk in Washington.

I have no use at all for anything more than minimal government. Most government agencies are unconstitutional in the first place. However, I am also willing to give the devil his due if they do something that is less harmful or invasive than their usual rule-making, or where a real benefit is achieved.

The only thing the program offers in return for compliance is a "merit badge". If you join the program and go along with what they are asking (note I did not say "telling") you to do, you get to display their special logo. That's it.

The way the program works is this: a company contacts the EPA and says they want to bring their lighting systems up to the new, more energy-efficient standards. The EPA sets them up with the guidelines. The company essentially promises to audit the lighting systems in a high percentage of their facilities. They then set in motion a program to retrofit or replace the obsolete systems with the ones meeting the EPA standards. It all must be finished by a certain date.

If the work is not completed, or the company chooses to drop out of the program, they notify the EPA of their intention. All they need to do then is cease using the special logo in their ad copy and other places they may have used it. No fines, no mandates, no badges and guns.

Trust me on this one, folks: Meeting these standards is very easy to do. The technology actually DOES exist to do it right, do it well, and do it reliably. Let me cite an example or two.

Those of you at home: see that table lamp with the 100 watt bulb? It can be replaced with a 23 or 28 watt compact fluorescent lamp unit that in addition to saving energy will last 10 times or more longer than the Edison lamp there now.

Several years back I attended a program to become a Green Lights Surveyor Ally. I was working as a lighting energy auditor for an electrical goods distributor in Portland Oregon. During a question and answer session, I asked the EPA instructors just how much good did they think the program was doing inasmuch as it was voluntary. I had expressed grave reservations about being, at bottom, an "ecology cop". (That subject will be covered in a future commentary).

The answer I got was heartening indeed.

We already have too much regulation of our lives by government. Until we can get these agencies abolished it would be grand to see them working with the people and entities from whom they want a desired result. Without threats. Without mandates. Think how productive this could be:

But alas, a program like that would reduce the need for as many welfare office workers, and they would not want that. We would be back to square one.

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