Everyone knows incandescent bulbs get hot when lit, and what that means is there's a lot of energy - about 90% of the energy they're consuming – not being converted in to light. It's just escaping in the form of heat. Compact fluorescent bulbs don't lose all that energy, last longer, and thanks to new innovations in manufacturing, now produce light that's pretty close to the glow associated with incandescent bulbs.

Stateside, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a similar ban in his state, and even Walmart has jumped on the light bulb bandwagon, initiating a drive to sell 100 million fluorescent bulbs in 2008, which is 2 ½ times the 40 million they sold in 2005.

But there's still a bit of controversy in the world of light bulbs. General Electric, which was founded by Thomas Alva Edison, has incandescent light bulbs in the pipeline that they claim will be twice as energy efficient as today's incandescents. And there's another version, which won't be ready until 2012, that they believe will be on par with compact fluorescent bulbs from an energy efficiency standpoint.

And even though swapping light bulbs seems like a little thing, if everyone in the world stopped using incandescent light bulbs, it would make a big dent in worldwide carbon emissions. It's been calculated that worldwide emissions from light bulbs equal about 70% of the carbon emissions from cars!

To order compact fluorescent light bulbs for home use click here.

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Girlawhirl finds a way to help the environment with energy efficient lightbulbs. read full entry