When Environmental Liberalism Wins The Day...

...you pay. Here's a looming example that, like gas prices, you will not be able to escape:

Get ready to dump your government-banned incandescent light bulbs and replace them with some LED-inspired lighting. The government ban on 100-watt incandescent bulbs goes into effect January 2012 and, like it or not, LED may be the replacement.

Light bulb manufacturers are looking at LED technology because it is energy-efficient and easily mass produced. All it takes to create an LED bulb is a handful of these light-emitting diodes and some bright engineers to figure out how to cram them into a standard pear-shaped bulb. Progress comes with a price tag and these 100-watt LED bulbs may cost as much as $50 each when they first arrive.

If you haven't started already, you may want to stockpile these incandescent bulbs and avoid the riots. It's almost a guarantee that shoppers will erupt when they discover a single light bulb now costs more than a carton of cigarettes and a six-pack of beer.

That's right, this ban has already been passed into law, and it will take effect in just over six months. The only hope of avoiding it is to badger, heckle, and pressure Congress to repeal it before January. Otherwise, incandescent light bulbs -- easily disposable and costing less than $1 each -- will be illegal to sell in stores, leaving you with no other option but $5 mercury-filled biohazards or $50 LED bulbs.

This is what happens when liberals get to dictate policy. Even now, the Obama administration is making plans to reward schools for being green rather than excelling at math, reading, or science, all while American jobs are disappearing because these bulbs will be illegal to manufacture or sell in the U.S. It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so damaging to both our national education system and our economic system. Instead, it's alarming to the highest degree, and yet another concrete example of how liberals simply cannot be trusted to govern this nation.

Few thought much of it when this law was passed in 2007, but I suspect it'll get a lot more press in the next few months. As an interesting experiment, just go through and count the number of light bulbs in your house, and then multiply it by $50 - how many hundreds of dollars will it cost you to fill each fixture just once? Seems almost like a new environmentalism tax to me, and it's a stiff one!

But hey, don't worry...the Department of Energy expects the cost of the LED bulbs to drop to about $10 each by 2015. Yeah, that's a lot better.