It was interesting to read on Yahoo that incandescent light bulbs may be going extinct. In New Jersey, where a town is named after Thomas Edison, a lawmaker has presented a bill that would compel government buildings to switch to fluorescent lighting in the next three years. Even more stringent is a bill presented in California, to ban the use of incandescent light bulbs altogether. This measure was taken given that incandescent light bulbs use 50%+ more energy than their fluorescent counterparts. The flip side, however, is that fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury vapors which can be released when the bulbs are broken. Accordingly, these light bulbs should be recycled rather than landfilled.

It is almost hard to fathom that our children may not even know what an incandescent light bulb is or how it looks, if these bulbs indeed become nothing more than museum pieces. Yet, this movement away from something heavily relied upon, yet energy-intensive, is what we need in a world that is readying itself to accept alternative energy on a greater scale. I just hope that one day our children will be taken aback when we tell them that we used to drive cars using gasoline or that our electricity came from burning coal. Perhaps the light bulb change seems like one small step in some respects, but it could be a giant step in terms of getting us out of our energy-wasting, fossil fuel-burning rut.