Yep!  Creeping Incrementalism.  First they limit your choices, then they ban them.  leaving you at their mercy.  Watch how the fools will laugh at anyone suggesting such a thing!  And then watch it happen (and those laughing will be parroting the new Napolean Motto that their masters have programmed into them).

save the world! breath in mercury fumes and dump mercury in our landfills! For mother earth! [/sarcasm]

And I refer you back to the title of DrG's article!

Well. This is one area where new research could help alot. I mean, incandescent lightbulbs "waste" most of the energy as heat which isn't used in anyway. It does make sense to find an alternative that is more efficient. But using toxic materials isn't maybe the preferred solution - cost benefit analysis might show which method costs more in the end if one factors in the waste disposal and production of CFL's and compares it to the "wasted" energy of incandescent lightbulbs and their production. I am not sure which one would win here.

I think most would agree with you.  The problem with CFLs is that they are being rushed in for one reason only - they reduce energy usage.  IN a country that takes years to approve an aspirin for use by the populace, it is tantamount to a hack job that will bite us in the end.  How?  For the very shortcomings that have already been pointed out. There is no perfect solution, but the hysteria driving the AGW movement has thrown all caution to the wind and made sure that the decisions made are bad ones.

there is currently research and development done on LED based bulbs, which are much more efficient than CFL and are completely non toxic. However cost of production and lifespan still need work. Research is continuing quickly, and eventually I Expect all bulbs to be LED. Until then, however, incandescents remain a safer, more environmentally sound solution than CFLs.

From a price standpoint, you can take a brand new incandescent, throw it in the trash, and get a brand new CFL, and you will STILL save a lot of money. Because as environmentally harmful and unsafe as CFLs are, they do take significantly less power to use.

I think they have the longevity licked on the LEDs, but price will only come down once they go into mass marketing.

CFLs, because of the mercury issue, are a bad mandate.  I think we will look back on them as another clossal blunder (like the Edsel).

LEDs longevity is directly tied to their illumination power. If you push enough voltage through them to create acceptable levels of illumination, then you greatly reduce longevity. And even if longevity is greater than that of a CFL, it still needs to increase further in order for total cost of ownership to be reduced. Double the lifespan, and you half the cost per year. since LEDs cost about 4x a CFL, their longevity needs to be at least 4x to be comparable.

the brightest LEDs today mimic 60 watt incandescent and require an actual heatsink and fan to prevent overheating; which further degrades reliability and longevity (moving parts).

It always amazes me where discussions go on blogs!

I will take your word for it as I am no expert.  But then the problem seems to be less one of longevity and more of illumination.  Still a problem (and of course the price is as well).  But considering where LEDs have come from in the last 20 years, I see them as becoming viable in the near future (I never said they were now).  If they can lick the issues you describe, then we basically have a source of light that is not lethal and will consume less energy.

And you know why I believe this?  because the driving force behind them is not some government bureaucracy, but consumers - via the computer industry (which the government has stayed out of so far).  it is not some Green Mandate or Obamination.  It is simple economics without government interferance.

In this specific case government intervention is very dubious. But there are other scenarios where I really like  that the government is playing watchdog. Most of these scenarios invovle negative externalities that are created in alot of industries like carcinogenic fumes, toxic waste, air and water pollution, workplace safety etc.

One example for that is here. I'll just excerpt it from an essay by Mark Sagoff, At the Shrine of Our lady of Fàtima, or Why political questions are not all economic, Arizona Law Review, Vol 23, 1283-1298.

There was a SCOTUS decision in 1981 about a Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Textile Mfgrs. v. Donovan, 101 S.Ct. 2478 (1981)). The American Textile Manufacturers Institute lawyers were heard in the Supreme Court in Jan 1981 and argued against a proposed OSHA regulation which would have severely reduced the acceptable levels of cotton  dust in textile plants. The lawyers for industry argued that the benefits of the regulation would not equal the costs. The lawyers for the government said that the law required tough standards. OSHA asked the Court not to decide in order to give the agency time to complete the cost benefit analsis required by the textile industry. The Supreme Court handed down its verdict on June 17, 1981 and found that the actions of regulatory agencies which conorm to the OSHA law need not be supported by cost benefit analsis and that Congress in writing a statute, rather than the agencies applying it, has the primary responsibility for balancing benefits and costs.

I don't think that all questions regarding  environmental measures have to be decided by economic reasoning. But each decision has to be evaluated individually, I find the whole topic of environmental policy way too broad to generalize.

It would be interesting to read how the decision for banning incandescent lightbults by 2014 was phrased. I mean, they had to pass it through the proper political channels, right?

As it is, this would be an argument for government intervention in economic markets in certain areas that concern public safety and overall costs for society.

Large L.E.D. technology has come a long way. Military vehicles are now being built with L.E.D. headlights and they work quite well (no heat sinks or fans). Big rigs and trailers now come with L.E.D. marker and tail lights. I've noticed that the price of these tail lights has dropped a great deal over the past few years as they have become the standard.

The key with L.E.D. lights is not in making a single diode to burn as bright as you need, but in clustering them to produce the needed light. The big down-side to them at the moment is the spectrum of light they produce isn't quite as good as what we currently use for indoor lighting. I can't imagine trying to read by that slightly blue/white light they produce. I keep a couple of flashlights in the truck, one L.E.D. and one with a Xenon  bulb. The spectrum difference of the two lights is quite obvious side by side.

Once they can produce a true white light I think they will be the way to go.

I agree.  Us "cowboy Americans" are not anarchists, just libertarians.  Government being a watch dog is one thing.  However, they are not being a watchdog when they are mandating toxic light bulbs because they save a few pfennigs in energy.  That was my point.  Here we have a safe alternative that has come down drastically in price in the last 20 years (and gone up drastically in quality) that the government has literally ignored (thankfully) versus one where we now have a toxic waste being introduced by law into every nook and cranny of living space.

A good ruling - on a bad law.  I agree with  SCOTUS on that, but the fault there is with the congress.  Before mandating taxes, a CBA should be run.  Anything in life is harmful if people are exposed to too much of it.  However there comes a point of diminishing returns.  We can save a million lives by reducing mercury to a certain small ppm, with minimal cost.  But to reduce it to zero would require more money than the GDP of the USA.

If you think about it, all should be, and almost all are.  Lead Poisoning - the cost of the health care far outweighs the cost of limiting exposure - so it is a cost benefit analysis.  Cost is not only found in manufacturing, but in all aspects of the handling and exposure of a substance.

No, that is the flaw in the ointment.  Congress needs no proper anything.  As we see with AGW, even bad science can create a stampede mentality that results in bad legislation.

I disagree.  Oversight, yes. Intervention, no.  By using an economic model (and law suits are part of the costs), the market can basically regulate itself, with the government just ensuring a fair and level playing field.  That is the role of government, not micromanaging industry.

Thanks for the further explanation!  As I stated previously, I am no lighting expert, but I am in computers and follow them rigorously (out of the MS support area now you will be glad to hear. ).  I have seen what LEDs have become, from the first eye straniners to today.  And that is just the beginning.  We have OLED on the horizon (ridiculously expensive, but they do address some of the illumination issues).

And it is consumers driving it, not Al Gore.

Isn't there a danger that workers/environment are only treated as means for the production of overall utility and not as ends in themselves if only the costs are regarded? I find that ethically dubious.

There is another example from the essay regarding a decision from 1977 by the Sec. of Labor to reduce the permissible ambient exposure level for benzene from 10 ppm to 1ppm. The American Petroleum Institute challened that new standard in court. They argued that the benefits to workers of the 1 ppm did not equal the costs to the industry. The standard did not appear to be a rational response to a market failure because it did not strike a balance between the interests of the workers in safety and the interest of industry and consumers in keeping prices down. The maxim of efficiency would require a standard which required safety until it cost more to prevent a risk that it cost workers to accept it.

I find the whole concept of evaluation things like health and happiness or the monetary value of nature difficult. I know  environmental ethic principles like physiocentrist approaches in which every living thing is an end in itself and has thus value, but it is downright difficult to apply those principles in practise for decisions like where to build a new industrial park or suburb or to reduce CO2 emissions. Overall, I sorely miss the ethical dimension in the whole global warming debate. Right now it seems to be all about posturing and accusing each other, and that turns it into a shallow debate. Not that I think you're article is shallow! But the media certainly presents it as such.

I really like this conclusion:

That is an exellent post!  In an ideal world, the existance of work would be for the sole purpose of the betterment of the worker.  But we are not in a perfect world.  So the sole purpose of workers is to produce more than they consume.  In effect, it is strictly a cost issue.  if I hire someone, I want to make money on that person's labor.  Now they can work for themselves, but they work for me because I bring in the contracts that gets them the work.  This is on a small scale, but it applies to a larger scale as well (except in Government - that is another story).

Look at it this way.  If I hire someone at $100/hour and then charge their services out at $100/hr, (and let's assume for the sake of this simplistic example that there is no overhead) I make nothing from their labors, but they are making a lot from mine (the goodwill my company has and that customers use to hire my company).  So I can do 1 or 2 things.  I can pay them less than what I charge for them, or I can make them pay me for the goodwill.  Say $20/hr.

The net effect is the same.  They "net" $80/hr.

In effect yes.  And while, with no government oversight, that would eventually be litigated in the courts (perhaps a long time), the government short cutted the process.  Which is their reponsibility (ensure the public safety being one of the mandates of a minimal government - think of it as the tribe around a campfire mentality).  Now the point of contention is how far the government can go or not go.  Clearly in some cases it goes too far and instead of oversight, becomes a dictatorial tyrant where it stiffles private enterprise (see the old USSR).  This can be seen in today's world by the American EPA and the CO2 ruling.  The ruling, if allowed to stand, will do nothing for the worker, but will drive many businesses out of business or increase costs dramatically (most likely both).  That is government being meddlesome, not government in oversight,

The fly in the ointment between you and me (or between a socialist and a capitalist in the purest sense of the definitions) is where the line should be.  Where does it stop being oversight, and start being control?  As a senator said "I can't define what pornography is, but I can tell you when I see it."

Actually I do not believe you do.  You just do not realize you are assigning costs to some things.  Even your quote does assign costs in a subjective way.  "The Public" is society.  Some places love opera so much the people vote to pay for it through taxes.  They do not write the check themselves, but they still pay for it since the taxes come from them.  So they have assigned a cost to it, and since majority rules (and the cigar chomping beer swilling sport fan is in the minority), everyone pays for it.  But that sport fan has a choice.  he can leave that society and move to one that puts football (or soccer) above opera and then use his taxes to pay for the sport.  Again, while "Art is not about money", it is all about money.

The problem with most is they do not realize they are making money decisions every day in almost every way (economic decisions).  But if you think about one thing, it becomes clear.  There is not an infinite amount of resources.  So there must be some way to allocate those resources (regardless of what the resource is).  Man has evolved (some would say devolved) to the point that they use money as the means of allocating resources.  Government can affect that (in a very negative way - again see the old USSR or present day Cuba/NK), but then it only makes it worse.  Government can also facilitate it, and that will actually endorse it (by removing the litigation in the benzene case you cited, more resources are spent on the end product insteadof wasted on courts).

They may say they refuse to look at worker health as commodities, but that is their own illusion.  it still is.  They are just assigning a higher value to it than the market will bear.  And in the end, all that accomplishes is to make the resource too expensive to use in the production of the product.  In otherwords, unemployed workers.