Nearly a month after the “How many legislators does it take to change a light bulb” bill was introduced in California; Australian officials have announced a plan to make incandescent light bulbs illegal in Australia, requiring citizens to go for compact fluorescents.  In addition to using less energy than a traditional bulb, Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) have the great advantage of saving the consumer time and money.  For a bulb to qualify under the government’s Energy Star program, a CFL must use less than 2/3 of the light of a conventional bulb and last up to 10 times longer.  The EPA estimates that if every American changed five incandescent bulbs to CFLs, we could prevent over a trillion pounds of greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere.  

So why not change a bulb?  Other than a spending a little more up front, people just have to break the habit of buying incandescent bulbs!  And there are now a slew of campaigns urging people to do just that.  In contrast to the top-down, regulatory actions being considered by California and Australia, the newest grass-roots campaign, the “Better Bulb campaign” was launched this week and boasts an alliance between Wal-Mart, Environmental Defense, the EPA, the Department of Energy, some religious organizations, and Yahoo.  According to the Yahoo website, North Carolinians have purchased 485,668 CFLs since New Years day of 2007, the equivalent to keeping 2,704 cars off the road; though we’ve also earned a less than impressive state ranking of 33rd.

As NC gets serious about stemming global warming, do you think that governmental campaigns to make the switch to CFLs are a great start to the reduction of greenhouse gases or is the hype being used to detract from greater issues of energy production?