As it is now, if I want to go with incandescent, my only option is to screw over the environment and free ride on the externalities. There's no real way to sin responsibly.

Sure there is. You can purchase carbon offsets.

They burn out? Are you putting them in the right lamp?

For instance, Drum kept losing them because he put them on a dimmer light, and they don't work on dimmer settings, it's on/off mostly.

I've had a CFL GE brand for 18 months and once left it one for over a month straight by accident--I love it. And I love it's light.

"I can pay more for my incandescent bulb and also pay for the carbon in it"

Um, wouldn't it be better to just not emit the carbon? The atmosphere doesn't care if it's paid for or not, the temperature goes up anyway.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this attitude seems irresponsible.

Andrew, the point of paying for the carbon is that the money is presumably used to offset the amount of carbon you have emitted. This could be for instance by plantings trees, paying some Chinese factories to install emission reducing technology or something similar. The point is that the end result to the environment is the same.

Whether these carbon offsets actually work as intended is a different story. One that hasn't to my knowledge been told very thoroughly and certainly not without a political agenda.

A carbon tax actually gives you less control than buying a carbon offset. You have very little control over what the government does with your carbon taxes, whereas you can choose exactly what kind of offset you wish to purchase.

Another way to "sin responsibly" when buying incandescent bulbs is simply to reduce your carbon emissions by an equivalent amount in some other way. Walk somewhere instead of driving. Turn your thermostat down a degree in the winter. Plant a tree in your backyard.

None of this is to say that a carbon tax would be a bad idea. Just that there are other ways you can achieve the same effect.

There are three reasons (at least) to have a carbon tax.

First, it reminds people that some items contribute more (sometimes substantially more than one might think) in terms of carbon emissions. (For this effect, it is best to make sure the carbon tax is made clear to the consumer.)

2. Second, it provides a financial incentive to buy items that produce less in the way of carbon emissions.

3. It may be used to pay for offsetting the carbon emissions produced by the purchased item.

They burn out? Are you putting them in the right lamp?

For instance, Drum kept losing them because he put them on a dimmer light, and they don't work on dimmer settings, it's on/off mostly.

Recessed lighting also requires CFL bulbs specifically designed for it.

Mattd,

Your reasons 1 and 3 don't make much sense. Regarding 1, a carbon tax is almost certainly not going to be clear to the consumer, and "reminding" people is not a good use of taxes anyway. Regarding 3, a carbon tax is not necessarily going to be used to offset carbon emissions. Governments have a habit of using revenues in whatever way is most politically expedient, and that's not necessarily the way they were originally intended to be used. Look at tobacco taxes and lottery tickets.

Still, I think a carbon tax is probably a good idea on balance. But we should be careful about not using bogus arguments to justify it.

Ezra, you seem to be comprehensively confused.

First of all, incandescent lightbulbs do not contain any carbon - they consume more power, necessitating more carbon dioxide release (and carbon dioxide is the alleged problem), assuming that your power is not from wind or nuclear sources.

Secondly, the point of a tax (in whatever form) is to raise the price of consumption, so you use less of it. Thus, you could simply tax yourself, by imposing a notional tax on your energy consumption, and either save that money (which I recommend), invest in companies that are researching alternative energy (a good idea), or spend it on carbon offsets (pointless).

As I have pointed out repeatedly over at Matt's post.

Carbon taxes are good, but CFLs are low-hanging fruit; the efficiency savings are huge. This is not picking certain techonologies, because energy standards are merely being raised. This is good. (Other technologies that meet the standard can also be used, and presumably prices for LEDs will come down and improvements in CFLs will continue.)

Carbon taxes will help the whole system to become more efficient, but it should be acknowledged that CFLs are ALREADY more efficient and save money over the life of the bulb even without a carbon tax. The same is true for building standards. Good windows and insulation pay off over time, but many people buy "starter" homes, and a lot developers would simply prefer to keep the price as low as possible, avoiding sticker shock. I am not sure the carbon tax can overcome this incentive structure--though obviously it should have some effect.

Also, as to time, in a previous apartement mine lasted for four years and presumably are still working. The ones in my current apartment have been working for 18 months.

As you can see, the savings are huge:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/business/14light.html?scp=4&sq=light+bulb+bill+&st=nyt

"The participants say that a complete phaseout would save $18 billion a year in electricity, and save the amount of power that would be produced by 30 nuclear reactors or as many as 80 coal plants."

I am all for market friendly ways to change the incentive structure, bring on a carbon tax, but there are other practical ways that can be brought in on a case by case basis. I think this bill was such a case.

I have a maybe not-so-peculiar problem with CFL bulbs.

They take a moment to come on, flickering a little after you hit the switch. Their energy consumption is low, and my understanding is that a large portion of that is spent when turning them on. Therefore, I think, if I'm returning to the room soon, I ought to leave the light on. Then I don't return, as I often don't, for a long while as the light blazes away.

Is the net result that I'm actually using MORE electricity with CFL bulbs?

I'm not really sure how I feel about the light emitted by energy savings bulbs (so far as I can tell, the main problem is that they burn out really quickly),

Au contraire, they last more than 10 times as long as incandescent bulbs -- and that's actually the low-end estimate. There's a good chance that in many of your lamps, you will never have to replace a CFL for the rest of your life.

If you really like the "soft glow", buy the Philips Marathon CFLs--very similar to incandescents in color. They do take about 15 seconds to warm up. The Home Depot in-house brand (nupower?) has a similar color, but don't last very long.

Sometimes this blog is such an echo chamber. No one has even thought of th enviormnental impact of switching to CFL. No one has discussed the mercury in each one or that the spent bulbs are so dangerous that they are to be collected and disposed of as hazardous waste rather than thrown away? If you switch to all CFL, how many of the hundreds of millions do you think will *really* be disposed of properly?

It ain't all gravy as the commenters here would have you belive. There are some downsides.

ElV, considering that we already have an infrastructure in place to dispose of hazardous household materials, such as computer equipment, the additional burden of adding rarely-failing CFL light bulbs to the pile doesn't bother me.

Ezra, you seem to be missing the issue that if CFLs are so great, but the financial benefits are not there to incentivize you to adopt them, that implies that electricity is priced too low (or the cost of buying CFLs is too high) to create the proper incentives. It has nothing to do with the existence of carbon offsets, though carbon taxes might boost the price of electricity high enough that switching to CFLs makes sense. At issue is, I think, the fact that you and I live in relatively small apartments, and replacing 4-5 light fixtures with CFLs doesn't really result in much money saved, whereas the family with the 4000 sq.ft. McMansion will likely see a huge drop in his monthly bill. That family sees the immediate benefits. For us, spending $100 on lightbulbs just to watch out electricity bill fall from $20 to $15/month isn't really that impressive.

Ezra, I'm a fan of CFLs, but if you don't like them one option is to see if your electric company will allow you to subsidize alternative power. I pay a bit more per kWh to subsidize wind farms through my electric company.

You could also buy the carbon offsets, but for some reason I'm not a big fan of that. It seems like a decision to take CO2 out of the atmosphere 10 years from now so that you can put more in now. That seems like the sort of thinking that got us here in the first place...

Sometimes this blog is such an echo chamber. No one has even thought of th enviormnental impact of switching to CFL. No one has discussed the mercury in each one or that the spent bulbs are so dangerous that they are to be collected and disposed of as hazardous waste rather than thrown away? If you switch to all CFL, how many of the hundreds of millions do you think will *really* be disposed of properly?

ElV, mercury is sent into the atmosphere by coal plants. While CFLs do have mercury, it's a net loss to use them. Yes, it's worthwhile to look into recycling programs specific to the CFLs instead of throwing them in the trash (due to the mercury), but it's not as bad as you make it seem.

Its odd that everyone is talking about offsets and taxes, when the topic of the post was a carbon auction.

What is wrong with the argument that "a carbon auction will let me sin responsibly"? The fact that its not so.

No allocation of carbon permits is going to be set at a quantity of CO2 that we can responsibly emit ... since at this point, given the century long average lifespan of CO2 in the atmosphere, that amount would be around 0. The fight will be over how much catastrophic climate change we are willing to risk to satisfy entrenched interests profiting from entrenched technology.

I have the same experience as Ezra -- in a variety of different lights, my CFL bulbs burn out v. quickly; sometimes in months. My house is 100+ years old, so we've been blaming it on the doubtless crappy wiring, but whatever it is, I'm definitely NOT saving money buying expensive bulbs that die quickly.

Really Ezra, you calculated the cost savings over lifetime of a CFL vs Incandescent now? Especially since incandescents sell for nearly 90% less? Because if you didn't then why would you expect a carbon tax to work since it takes those calculations that no one does and makes them more difficult.

About that soft glow... You don't have to use CFLs for everything. Lights that only get turned on for a few seconds at a time (closets, stairways) are probably better off with incandescents. The 35W halogen desk lamps produce plenty of good light for a small workspace. CFLs and not-so-compact fluorescents are aesthetically tolerable for ceiling lights. Until affordable LED lighting brings about the Millenium, that's good enough for me.

CFLs or carbon offsets ...

Hmmm. Choice A or B? Here's another option: We don't limit ourselves to two choices.

IMO, neither of these options is "good." I don't like the mercury and other environmental hazards of CFLs and I don't like the complacent Carbon Offset approach.

Here's an example of one 3rd option: LEDs. The technology has mushroomed over the past several years, providing amazingly good light and incredibly low power consumption!

I'm really surprised at the lack of understanding and objectiveness of some of these comments. Noone is outlawing anything. The energy efficiency standards are just being raised for a freaking lightbulb. Just as they should have been for windows, air conditioners, automobiles, etc for the last 20 years. People are lazy and cheap most of the time. Even brand new houses are built with crap windows and inefficient heating, cooling, and insulation systems. People don't automatically do that sort of thing on their own. Most people dont look at the 30 year benefits of things. They know they will only live somewhere for 3 years on average and then move, so why invest in the most efficient stuff? It is really similar to the pushback recycling used to get. Noone wants to sort their garbage. The bill doesn't choose a technology, it just says that the current most used technology is not keeping up with efficiency needs. Pretty simple, reasonable, and straightforward. Good for everyone. If mercury is your axe to grind, make sure you dispose of the bulb properly. That will be part of the new system too. The benefits far outweigh the costs on this one.

JB .. there have been proposals to outlaw incandescants. Not official ones here yet, but there have been official onesin the uk. (search bbcnews if you feel the need.)

That said.. its not gonna happen any day soon. The environmental movement hasn't picked up THAT much power yet.

The amount of mercury in a CFL is pitifully small compared to the right-wing nay sayers that want to hang on to the old, 'just cuz'. On avg 3 mg, and if you look for low mercury ones as low as 2mg. If you have any fillings you have almost 200% more sitting in your mouth, per filling. So if you managed to break the CFL, and suck in all the mercury from the bulb through a straw you'd still have less mercury exposure then getting your teeth drilled.

Disposal.. this stuff comes out of the ground.. we have landfills that are designed to contain just such contaminants. Really worried about it? Quit pussyfooting around the problem and lets setup a system for disposing them! We do it for batteries right now, why not CFL?

Global warming is a more serious and impending threat then mercury escaping landfills.

..carbon offsets. Bleh. They're pretty much crap to make the gilded ones feel better. Pretty much everyone with 2 coins rubbing together wants to do nothing more then buy offsets instead of changing their habits. The gist of that system is that no american would change, and some mystically created schmuck in Guam is supposedly going to be planting an awful lot of trees on land he couldnt possibly own.

You want to effect carbon emissions Ezra.. do it. Reduce the energy you use. Still feel stoked and want to contribute, invest in some anticarbon tech. ..then you've contributed less and helped to solve the problem. Offsets is good salve for the conscience, but if your still smokin up the CO2, your still part of the problem.

You may try getting the 'soft light' CFLs, they have light that seems much more like regualar incandescents. Ive filled my shop with them from 1 day to the next, and not one person noticed the change.

burning out. Seriously .. check them for overheating. They are little flourescant lamps after all, and the electronics just doesn't like to overheat.

..and if you are paying 90% more for incandescents you dont know how to shop. They've been on sale around here for $.89-$.99 cents at 4 stores over the past year. (not including walmart, where Im sure they are a dime or so less.) I know of no place selling regular bulbs for

If you own a commercial place that has LOTS of lights.. its a must have change. I could see the difference in electricity usage from 1 bill to the next.

hmm.. not sure why my paragraph died off like that. But anyway.. it was supposed to end like this.

I know of no place selling regular bulbs for....
$.10 or less.