Today at the Dept. of Energy President Bush signed the massive energy bill that just glaciated its way through Congress. Good on him. There will be tons of news of all its ramifications, its failures to fully grapple, its overeaching in places (see yesterday’s post on the NYTimes biofuels piece), and so on.

It’s the traditional, 100-watt incandescent lightbulb’s incipient illegality (2012) in the US that catches the eye here, and is wisely seen by some reporters as the best snapshot summary of how climate change legislation is reaching into routine everyday life. Lower wattage incandescents are to get the ax pretty quick after that. Other countries – Australia comes to mind – were already on that track.

Not clear to The Tracker is whether halogen bulbs — at heart nothing but incandescents with a few alterations to increase efficiency by 15 percent or so — will soldier on for awhile. What about dimmable fixtures? Compact fluorescents can do it but, like a dancing elephant, cannot do it well.

Here’s a smattering of the stories already out, including those filed yesterday in anticipation of the bill’s signing, all sought through the search-term filter of the 100-watt bulb:

Los Angeles Times Richard Simon puts the bulb first but quickly gets at other ways the new bill will hit home; Green Bay Press Gazette Bob van Enkenvoort keeps his attention on the lightbulb issue ; NYTimes John M. Broder ; Wash. Post Steven Mufson puts in his lede that this ends the reign for Thomas Edison’s best known invention ; Bloomberg Daniel Whitten puts in some numbers on the aggregate money lower-wattage bulbs will save Americans ;

Not everybody’s enthused: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s “right wing guy” and columnist Patrick Mcllheran is soundly irritated by this busybody legislation, and the prospect of having to use bulbs with weird light. His sentiment, one suspects, will be widely shared. The Tracker can attest, however, that the latest CFLs are hard to tell, color-wise, from an old-fashioned incandescent. If they’re behind a lampshade, they’re fine. It’s that dimmable aspect that may be a little bump in the road on this transition.

Grist for the Mill:

White House Press Release ; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Press Release ; Natural Resources Defense Council Press Release ; Competitive Enterprise Institute Press Release ;

-CP

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.