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Republican Jane Harman (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation aimed at setting target dates, beginning January 1, 2012, to ban the sale of traditional incandescent light bulbs, switching America over to low-energy alternatives. And why not? Don't the new low-energy 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (CFLs) use just one-fifth of the energy of traditional bulbs? Isn't it a no-brainer?

Harman is taking her lead from the European Union that recently banned sale of CFL's across its member nations from 2009, even though there is a raft of hidden economic, energy and environmental with which neither the EU nor Harman seem cognisant.

Harman maintains that implementing such a ban would be, "an important first step toward making every household, business and public building in America more energy-efficient." Commenting on the Huffington Post blog, Harman said, "It can help transform America into an energy-efficient and energy-independent nation." That is, if America is still able to operate in the dim light of the low-energy obfuscated facts.

For a start, CFL low-energy light bulbs are up to twenty times more expensive to produce than the standard tungsten-filament bulbs that Harman wants scrapped. She might also like to know that the manufacture process for CFLs uses up to ten times the energy used in the manufacture of traditional bulbs. In addition, CFLs need much more ventilation (top and bottom). A recent review of what such a switchover will mean for Brits in the wake of the EU ban recently revealed that up to fifty percent of existing fittings would need changing, at an estimated cost of around $6 billion. Heaven knows what a similar exercise would reveal for American businesses and homes.