LET THERE BE (SICKLY BLUE) LIGHT.

And now we have the light-bulb ban—the odd consequence of our current public religion, our present national ethics. For all this really is nanny-speak: the taking of the moral judgments that religious fervor has spewed into public life and the forming of them into platitudes. More than that, it’s nanny-speak made the law of the land, truisms with the force of congressional enactment. There’s an atheist group called the Abimelech Society whose members pride themselves on their supposedly daring feats of removing Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms and destroying them. The daring is not readily apparent; the day is long past when public outrage over anti-Christian atheism posed much threat. But think of it as a metaphor: Perhaps the time is coming, after our current environmental revival has ebbed, when would-be bravos will sneak compact fluorescent bulbs from hotel rooms—and replace them with clandestine incandescents.

Heh. Edward Abbey “monkey-wrenching” for the 21st Century.

Plus this: “The psychological cost of these bulbs has not yet been calculated. Perhaps it never will be, but here’s one guess at a measure: The Department of Energy reports that from 2007 to 2008 the sale of CFLs in the United States dropped, despite the fact that CFLs were widely available, routinely advertised as superior, and large consumers like factories and municipalities had the looming enforcement of the energy bill to spur them to switch. It’s not that, as a nation, we didn’t try compact fluorescent bulbs. We did try them, and we found them wanting.” That’s been my experience.