Great idea, ban the conventional light bulb, that way the poor can't afford lighting, after all though in the long term the CFL may save you money, it doesn't matter if you can't purchase it in the first place! The poor don't deserve such luxuries such as lighting, that should only be for the Super Elites! Now we just need a way to take away lighting from the middleclass....

List of Good Countries: Georgia,Poland, Lithuania, Britain, and Australia.   Feel free to PM me suggestions for my list, its lacking a bit

Junk Science had a link to a blog entry from someone over in the UK where they're having to deal with this same stuff: Light bulbs and Eco-fascism.

It goes into a lot of the drawbacks of CF bulbs. I'm aware of some of them from personal experience (they don't work well, sometimes not at all, in cold weather and you can't use them in enclosed fixtures). The big one though was this:

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically
they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are
turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life...

Here's a regulation idea ripe for passing - Ban hot air emmitted by fear- mongering journalists.

Bye bye Charlie......

  So how many fluorescent bulbs will it take to light the sets for these nightly newscasts?

   Because surely everybody will be included in the ban won't they?

Ok. They have already done this in Australia; look into it. Australia wants all incandescent bulbs phased out by 2009. I hope they don't ban my halogens, I love halogen light. I have a massive salt water aquarium that uses sun-lamps. Are they going to ban those? Yikes!

I don't want to give the regulators any ideas, but what's impressed me for lighting these days is LEDs. They're getting increasingly-cheap, and although they're said to burn-out eventually, I've sure never seen it. And people can choose the exact part of the spectrum they want (hell, they've even gotten LEDs to lase, but almost nobody needs that!). I have all 3 kinds of lights, and I totally agree there should be no mandate from big government on this issue.
JMR

While Europe lags behind the US in productivity, freedom, and democracy, it does lead the world in pioneering and groundbreaking SOCIALIST and ECO-INSANITY.

As such, the EU is widely admired by Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and the Democrapic Party. People very well insulated from the crap that is socialism by having vast wealth, hidden away from prying IRS eyes.

For instance, the totalitarian EU is forever raising taxes and plotting even more government control over the lives of its citizens. Many of whom quite like being told what to do morning, noon and night. After all communism and fascism did start there, and has never really gone away.

Which bring me to their latest shite idea ... LIGHT BULBS & ECO-FASCISM.

So, what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs that have served us well since that bulb went off above Mr Edison's head?

1. CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.
2. They do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, so some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim – and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem – the so-called "strobe effect".
3. CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 50C or lower than –18C they don't work),
4. CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top. The implications of which for anyone who wants light horrendous. Not a problem for the mental enviros who would like us all to live in mud huts with tallow candles.

COSTS UP... POWER UP... ENERGY CONSUMPTION UP
Home owners will have to replace billions of light fittings, at a cost a large tad upwards of frackin' outrageous..

• Low-energy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture.
• Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites – which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.
• Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously.
• The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).
• If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their "green" bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.
• But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximize their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs – thus canceling out their ONLY supposed advantage.
• Such is the price we are now beginning to pay for the "eco-madness" which is sweeping through Western political classes like a psychic pandemic. Or STDs at a bareback whore house.
• And this looming crazy Eco-blunder is arguably the starkest symbol to date of the crazy new world into which certifiable loons and fanatics like AlGore are leading us.

The answer is socialism. But only if the question is:

"What's the fastest way to impoverish, enslave and destroy people?"