Red Tory has done an excellent piece on compact flourescent lightbulbs (CFLs). He concludes that the rush to replace incandescent bulbs is a form of eco-madness, and ends by saying “We need real solutions based on cold, hard facts; not hollow feel-good gestures and expensive, harebrained boondoggles.”

Bill McNair just sent me this illuminating story:

WASHINGTON – Brandy Bridges heard the claims of government officials, environmentalists and retailers like Wal-Mart all pushing the idea of replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving and money-saving compact fluorescent lamps.

So, last month, the Prospect, Maine, resident went out and bought two dozen CFLs and began installing them in her home. One broke. A month later, her daughter's bedroom remains sealed off with plastic like the site of a hazardous materials accident, while Bridges works on a way to pay off a $2,000 estimate by a company specializing in environmentally sound cleanups of the mercury inside the bulb.

With everyone from Al Gore to Wal-Mart to the Environmental Protection Agency promoting CFLs as the greatest thing since, well, the light bulb, consumers have been left in the dark about a problem they will all face eventually – how to get rid of the darn things when they burn out or, worse yet, break.

To read more, click here

Lovely of him to point out the problem as "hare brained boondoggles" - glad to see the problem can be articulated so concisely.

Furthermore, by what definition does an idea have to be a hare brained boondoggle?  Enough with the diatribe.  Despite the impending ecological doom about to descend upon all of us in regards to our light sources,  I would like to point out one economic incentive.  Money.  

LED lights are FAR more effective however the implementation of such lights is expensive.  Nay, PROHIBITIVE.  The rhetorical questions to then ask are:

What is the average cost of outfitting a home in LED lighting vs. CFL

What demographic would consider getting this done?

In regards to the environment who would make the biggest impact?

 It's like organics.  You think that you are doing well by the environment and yourself when you purchase organics, but if the organics are from overseas, you shouldn’t buy them and instead buy local natural produce.

I have recently put in a few of the CFLs in my house as an experiment, and so far they have been okay. Somehow I don't think I will see a significant savings on my power bill though.

And like Bast says, it is not easy being green, but I think the eco-mania is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future.