The claims about energy saving are based on dubious comparative output and lifespan data and little is said about disposal. In the UK the government seems to ignore the EU requirements regarding their disposal and they will illegally wind up in landfill.

If the “cradle to grave” environmental costs are so good why are they impossible to find out? Can no one make some estimate? The Environmental Institute of Heidelburg have done it for cars.

Most households currently use normal bulbs which produce a lot of heat, this heat contributes in a small but significant way to the ambient temperature of the living space. In the absence of this heat, for example when energy saving bulbs are fitted it is likely that the domestic central heating system will be called upon to make up this small difference to satisfy the comfort of the occupants. Some so called experts have suggested that this contribution is negligible.

I have to disagree entirely with the assertion, I have personally used this method many times in my life to raise the temperature of cold hotel rooms which I have been staying in, when the central heating system has not been functioning at the time I required it. An extra four or five hundred watts of heat from light bulbs is very welcome under such circumstances. If on the other hand, I put on extra clothing instead of turning up the heating, it would therefore follow that this extra layer of clothing will have consumed energy during its manufacture, it would also follow that the purchase of the extra clothing will have added to the wealth of a manufacturer, retailer and distributor all of whom will avail themselves of consumer luxuries.

It would seem that when we are implementing an energy saving measure, the saving may be cancelled out by a myriad of other elements in a cause-effect chain which tends to go unnoticed by almost everyone, especially carbon foot print analysts. In many cases, energy saving will invariably increase the disposable income in someone’s pockets, which they will spend on something that will almost certainly use energy and other resources.

I have noticed that in our extremely “dumbed down” society most people are unaware of the scale of the industrial and manufacturing processes involved in producing the most basic of commodities. Entire mountains are being blasted apart to gather the raw ore which is then processed in massive energy consuming factories to produce billets of steel, copper, aluminium, etc. These are then used in the production of the tools and machines that make the tools and machines that help to make more tools and machines that help to make end products such as television sets, fridges, washing machines, aeroplanes, cars etc. etc.

A low energy light bulb has a more complex manufacturing process when compared to a standard light bulb, it has considerably more glass, it contains a substantial amount of plastic, it has a circuit board with components as well as additional chemicals which a standard light bulb does not contain.

I would suggest that if any energy was saved during its use this energy will have been spent during the following four stages of its life; 1 pre-manufacturing of all the extra raw materials, 2 actual manufacturing, 3 profitable sales stages and 4 profitable recycling stage. Lets not forget this forth stage as if recycling plants do it for love not money, we really must remember the hypothetical “Trevor” who is the managing director of a highly lucrative recycling plant, he has two homes, one of which is abroad, he has two luxury cars, a wife with expensive taste, two daughters of which one got married recently in a eight thousand pound wedding dress with a twenty five thousand pound reception followed by three weeks in the Maldives. This consumption has a huge knock on effect, and we wont even start to imagine the consumption of the middle management and other employees of the recycling company all spending their disposable income on more and more “stuff” which has had to be produced from the planets resources.

Most of us will have been taught the Law of Conservation of Energy during our school physics days, the law relates to the energy in any system and how it may take on various forms. The law of conservation of energy states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore the sum of all the energies in the system is a constant.

I would suggest that this law has implications far beyond the world of physics and may actually be just as relevant in the area of environmentalism. The idea that saving the environment can be successfully achieved via methods such as recycling (in its current form) and fitting energy saving light bulbs may be fundamentally flawed. The concept of carbon foot printing does in almost all cases not take into account the broader implications of an energy saving measure.

We must remember that when Ms Jones came home from her latest eco protest and decided to have little Sophie and Beatrice, an entire planets worth of industry started to provide a lifetimes worth of commodities for them. Oops, there goes another mountain of iron ore and a thousand barrels of oil. The problem isn’t to do with the number of light bulbs but rather the number of consumers.

In the current movement to “safe the planet” no one dares to mention the obvious, which is, the entire industrial base on our planet exists for one reason only, and that is to cater for the consumptive needs of billions of humans, it would therefore follow that a reduction in human numbers would halt and or diminish the level of industrialisation. Fewer people would mean fewer products sold with the inevitable closure of many types of industry. This is of course the catch 22, no government would ever actively want their population numbers to fall dramatically, this would mean the loss of trillions of Euro, Pounds and Dollars generated through the many taxes which people pay during their existence, especially the purchase taxes on the billions of products which are consumed daily. This is why we are lead blindly down a road of recycling and energy saving, being told that it is effective and we should be proud of ourselves, oh what fools we humans can be.