We're slowly building up a stash of incandescents (say, if a bundle pack is cheaper on sale when we just needed one bulb). I get terrible headaches from CFLs, even the more pricey ones. We only use them in rooms I don't spend much time in (kids' rooms, spare bath), or in light fixtures that I just don't use (but my family does). We use natural light as much as we can anyway, and now that it's nearly summer we don't use our lamps much at all. The few cents we'd be saving by using all CFLs does not cover the cost of my medication or the cost of my discomfort.

When the day comes that we as Americans are no longer allowed to purchase incandescents, we will not be using CFLs either. If we can afford to do so, we will buy LEDs, if not, back to candles and oil lamps for us. I do not feel that it is legally within the government's role to force me to buy a product I should not (or simply do not want to) use against my will.

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NZ is going to have to do a lot more than change lightbulbs to become sustainable and reduce climate changing emissions. The real big GHG emitters in NZ are cars and cattle. But for years, these seem to have been politically untouchable. I went to a sustainability day in Wellington last year and a government person there told me that officials had tried to recommend eating less meat as part of a public sustainability initiative, but the powers that be had removed this from the list. And huge money is still earmarked (as far as I know) for building roads in NZ, while a tiny fraction of that money is spent on public transport, cycling, and walking. Beyond this, the NZ population seems to have increased rather dramatically in the last 10 years, partly I think as a result of NZ government policies, and this has placed pressure on infrastructure like electricity supply. NZ aiming for sustainability? For many years, NZ government talk on sustainability has seemed to me like lip service over an underlying rampant greed. Like putting lipstick on a pig.

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