As I've pointed out before, one thing a lot of leftists/liberals have in common is a firm conviction that they are somehow the only ones smart enough to do the right thing, and if the benighted have to be forced into i? Well, too bad. As Stalin said, omelets, eggs, you know.

For your information, I use CFLs extensively, something I have mentioned here a few times before.

I didn't use them when they first came out years ago. Those models were large, noisy, and expensive. As time went on, manufacturers improved them. As time went on, they got cheaper, and more reliable, and their forms shrank to the point where they fit in normal fixtures. I picked some up for lights that we kept on a lot, like bathrooms for the kids when they were smaller.

More time went by, and the tech kept getting better. The bulbs became cheaper. They came on instantly, instead of with a flicker and a slow brightening. The colors became more natural, and there were choices of "daylight" colors and others. I started putting them in other fixtures in the house. At this point, every bulb used for lighting in my house is fluorescent with the exception of six of them hooked to dimmers.

I picked up some CFL four-packs at Walgreens a couple of days ago for about ten bucks. The lifetime is still erratic--of three bulbs I replaced of a similar kind, one lasted almost two years, one eight months, the other only three months. That in a fixture that's on almost all the time (the lifetime estimates for such bulbs assume you only run them 3 hours a day or so. Read the fine print). The boxes claim they contain less mercury than before.

All of this was long before our Fearless Leaders in Washington suddenly discovered CO2, and decided they had to jump in and Make A Difference. Nobody forced me into it, any more than the millions of other people who did the same things I did, which is what allowed the manufacturers to improve quality and lower costs over the past years. It would have happened if Washington D.C. had vanished in a puff of purple smoke ten years ago.

We don't need you running our lives. We don't need you making our decisions for us. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the people who claim to be able to make these decisions for others are any brighter than I am, and so far, most of them have been people I could outthink with my head in a steel bucket and somebody hitting it continuously with a broom handle.

The market handles things like this better than the government ever will. People bought fuel-efficient cars back in the 70s, and hybrids now, not because somebody held a gun to their heads, but because gas prices went up. Not surprisingly, the government has a lot to gain by telling everyone the world would fly out of orbit without their hands on the tiller. Doesn't mean it's true.

When the general public figures out what's happened with light bulbs (not to mention a few other things), I predict they'll tell the government to take a flying leap, and you're going to see some serious backtracking in Congress.