What I dont understand is how incondecent lightbulbs were able to be around for 100s of years
While nowadays it seams every 20years we create something new we deem "better" even if in some ways its not and activly try to prevent people that actualy try to use the older lights ( for their own reasons) to not be able to do so
And worst of all, everyone does it (or if not now, will start doing so), so u cant even move to some other country
I cant even blame one political party for it, cuz it seams no matter who is in power, they all have the same thinking
What was different 100years ago, then now?
Why didnt people back in the day ban lighting tehnologies?
Always been like that.
In the late 1920s, trucks and lorries with solid wheels were prohibited even though they only had been on the market for 15 or 20 years or so. Reason: solid wheels damage city streets. Owners had to replace them with the now standard air filled tires, or possibly solid rubber tires (i don't know the details).
Horse trams? Prohibited. Why? With the number of horse trams in big cities, the amount of horse piss and (...) in the streets was unacceptable. They had to be replaced by steam, and later electric trams - or cable cars.
Town gas/coal gas/lighting gas? As soon as natural gas reserves were found, the entire population of my country was forced to switch over to natural gas. Why? Gas factories are incredibly polluting, producing large amounts of PCBs, sulphur compounds and all other kinds of nasties that were often just dumped into the nearest river. Furthermore, coal gas consists of an important part of carbon monoxide which lead to deaths if the pilot flame (remember, this is the pre-thermocouple gas valve era!) or burner went out but the gas kept flowing.
It should be obvious that natural gas is way cleaner than having a coal gasification plant in every city. My country gave subsidies to those who were forced to replace their appliances. In many other cases the appliance could be fitted with a different orifice and be converted to natural gas.
Steam trams? Yes, even those were eventually banned from some cities, because they were too loud and polluting. House wifes didn't take too kindly on having coal soot blown over their freshly washed clothes. AFAIK Paris had some special high pressure air operated trams for a while until electrics came along. Even in the 1920s people cared about pollution. Just not everywhere, and only where you could see the immediate effects like soot stains on clothes you hang to dry outside.
With regards to lighting tech, i am sure that there are regulations to be found on the type of lighting that should be used in cities. Perhaps very over arching, like 'The light intensity on well traveled roads in and near the city is required to be X lux' which does not explicitely prohibit oil lanterns, but they definitely de facto prohibit oil lanterns and gas burners without the mantle. You just have to really dig into archives to find evidence of that. And if you also start digging into the news papers from that era, i'm sure you'll find wistful memoires about the romance of gas lighting that is destroyed and replaced by those gosh darn incandescent lights.
Finally, i do agree that stupidity runs rampant in politics. One cause in my country, is that under the 'make the government smaller to save tax money' movement we've had in my country for 20 years now, many highly educated advisors and engineers that were on government payroll, have been let go. Instead, the government now hires external for-profit consultancy firms.
Obviously that A. does not actually make things cheaper because external consultancy is screamingly expensive, and B. the national and local governments now have way less technical knowledge 'inside'. That means you fully have to rely on the fancy consultancy reports, while being practically 'blind' or 'illiterate' as a local/national government when it comes to tech and science stuff.
You can't call out consultancy firms and populist fellow politicians on their (...), if you cannot distinguish between technical and scientific facts and management babble yourself.
