don't shoot the messenger

I know there's a love-in going on right now with every planet conscious person (or planetary-waking anyway) and the C.F.L. And sure, they use less energy than incandescents and are more efficient on a day-to-day basis. But I have a few questions, and only because I see CFLs becoming the panacea that paper recycling was just a few years ago. And it makes me wonder two things 1) has anyone seen a life-cycle analysis for CFLs? I mean how much energy it takes to make one, and of course how much energy is required to treat them once they have burnt out? And 2) has anyone considered what we will do with all that mercury? I mean if there are say, 1.5 Bn tungsten incandescents in North America right now, and we replace 1/2 with CFLs, so in 8 years what are we going to do with 750 Million mercury bulbs? I heard that only 13% of fluorescent bulbs get recycled and out of that something like 4% are CFL. Now surely, in the next few years we will figure out what to do with them. Right? Are we forcing GEcommage to deal with it? Osram Sylvania? What will this look like in a few years??

That's why I like LEDs!