[Porsche-O-Phile]

CFLs suck - the lighting quality is terrible, they're an environmental disaster, they're all made in China (in addition to the trade deficit implications, think of the embodied energy of transportation/distribution), they take a long time to warm up, etc.

However they do pencil out for me in terms of life-cycle cost savings so I've switched everything over to them for now. LEDs still do not (best price I could find was about $60 per bulb, which is still far too expensive to realize a life-cycle cost benefit).

As time goes on I suspect LEDs will become far better in terms of the lighting quality (it's already improving) and eventually the costs will drop to the point where they'll start being viable. I don't expect this to happen for a few years though. Until then I'll use the CFLs.

For very specialized applications (like exterior security floodlights that I have on motion sensors) I have a stock of incandescents. For applications like that I simply can't wait for a CFL to warm up - I need the light right then and there.

The whole "green economy" is a joke. It's based on hugely falsified numbers and manipulated perceptions. The core concept of trying to encourage sustainable and ecologically-sensible thinking is valid, but the execution is being botched horribly by the interests most connected to it (and government, predictably).