We recently published a press release presenting our finding that Americans from all walks of life and all regions are already well on their way to adopting new, more-energy-efficient lamps. Congress has been debating the merits of keeping or repealing laws about new lightbulb standards, but they don’t seem to be considering that 81 percent of households already have at least one compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), up from about 50 percent just a few years back. Even in the two states with the lowest CFL penetration (North and South Dakota), more than two-thirds of households have at least one. And in Alaska and California, approximately 87 percent of households already have one CFL, and nearly 50 percent have six or more!

Though the news out of Washington would have everyone thinking this is a Republican-versus-Democrat issue, the data from real Americans don’t bear this out—conservatives, moderates, and liberals use CFLs at almost exactly the same level. I guess almost everyone believes that getting more for less is a good idea.

Efficiency standards worked for refrigerators and air conditioners, so why not for lightbulbs? In the U.S., lighting ...