The whole basis of changing light bulbs is less CO2 gas; but what you really get is an increase in Mercury? A non-toxic gas for a deadly toxic liquid? Hmm...

The amount of mercury contained in just 25 standard fluorescent lamps can pollute a 8 hectare (20 acre) lake, making the fish in the lake unsafe for human consumption.

http://www.sickamongthepure.net/uvradiation/fluorescent.html

http://www.healing-arts.org/children/vaccines/vaccines-mercury.htm#Thimerosal

And of course it never goes away - because the average consumer doesn't know about the tariff, so when it ends, the retailers all (well, I assume they will, I would) decide to keep the retail price the same and pocket the difference so it persists long after the tariff is dead and buried...

This may be a dumb question - but “They” say that incandescent bulbs are Satan’s very own non-green thingy (used by people who want to kill babies and kittens) because a significant chunk of the bulb's energy use is output in the form of heat instead of light and thus “wasted”.

When do we use lights though? Personally I use mine much more in the winter, than summer and mostly after dark.

I also heat my home then, so surely any “wasted” heat output by my bulbs then is not actually being wasted at all. It’s simply making a quiet contribution to my house hold heating and thus fractionally reducing the heating required from my boiler.

So, my question - surely a lot of that so called “wasted” heat is not actually really being wasted at all, or am I missing something?

Why would I want to swap my incandescent lightbulbs, which help the ice caps and rain forests grow, for 'eco-friendly' ones which poison the planet?

If you're going to call this column 'Government Failure', you first have to point out something that Governments have NOT Failed at! What is a Government Success? Then we can judge if this is a failure or not!
It's a bit like that expression 'my good wife'- you're left with the distinct impression that he has two wives, and he never talks about the bad wife. If you'd just labelled it, 'Governmets doing what they do best', it would be completely accurate.