Opinion | Don't stop making incandescent lightbulbs -

I knew this day would come. Still, I wasn’t prepared for the dark, psychic wallop it would deliver.

Naturally, I found solace in retail therapy. I ordered 200 incandescent lightbulbs online.

You laugh. Or, perhaps, you weep in consonance with my pain. Either way, the end of pleasant lighting is nigh. On July 31 — a date that shall live in infamy — the United States will cease production of incandescent lightbulbs. How did this happen?

Slowly and inevitably.

Dana Milbank: I was busted by the light police. They had a point.

Let me take you back to 2010 and to the house at 2913 Olive St. NW in Georgetown, where I lived with an adopted blind poodle named “Ollie.” (I suppose if I had lived on Salamander Street, I’d have named him Sal.)

My house emitted a warm, pinkish glow that set it apart from the others on the block. Or so passersby would mention from time to time if I happened to be sitting outside on the stoop. What caused this beautiful glow, they would ask. And if I happened to be sipping a glass of wine, which often bestirs a tendency to share secrets, I would reply, “Pink lightbulbs.”

I had been using them for years, ever since the prettiest woman I have ever known told me about them. Pink light is flattering to women, she said — men, too, presumably, but who cares? When I told others about the pink bulbs, they’d race to hardware stores to stock up.

Follow this authorKathleen Parker's opinions

In later years, after I surrendered to online shopping, I ordered pink bulbs by the case. This was already considered heretical by hardcore environmentalists pushing the industry (and unassuming Americans) toward the hideously harsh bulbs known as “snow cones,” “swirls” or, more accurately, CFLs (compact fluorescent lightbulbs). We’re all familiar with the CFLs’ ghastly, greenish hue, especially in motels and hotels where, with the flick of a switch, an alien being can stare back at you from the bathroom mirror. (I travel with my own lightbulbs.)

A glaring problem: How LED lights worsen light pollution

I suspect that CFLs were invented by communists who believe that incandescent bulbs contribute to vanity and, thus, to the pursuit of individual desires. By ridding America of incandescence, they could undermine its citizens’ positive self-image and condition them to accept the moral imperatives of harshness and inconvenience. First, they take the lightbulbs; next, the gas stove. Eventually, capitalism surrenders to state enforcement mechanisms. Of course, I’ve made all this up, but it seems plausible.

What is true is that the CFLs are more efficient and last longer.

In 2006, author Charles Fishman, whose several intriguing books should be on your reading list, wrote a piece for the magazine Fast Company titled “How many lightbulbs does it take to change the world? One. And you’re looking at it.” It was the hideous snow-cone CFL.

Fishman, an A-plus reporter who loves numbers, was on to something. A friend from our days together at the Orlando Sentinel in the early 1980s, Fishman was never happier than when he was writing sentences like this one: “… if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people.”

Four short years later, an even better bulb — the LED (light emitting diode) — became popular in hotels and hospitals, where lighting efficiency often exceeds performance efficiency.

I dislike these bulbs even more for all the same reasons. Efficiency has no place in art.

It’s worth noting that Fishman also published a book in 2006 titled “The Wal-Mart Effect,” which I read at the time and remember mostly for a chapter concerning salmon. Thanks to Walmart, the previously pricey salmon was democratized. Everyone could buy and enjoy salmon for a little more than $4 a pound — unless they read this book.

More than half of all salmon sold in the United States comes from Chile, where millions of salmon are “farm-raised” in huge wire pens in the Pacific Ocean. Crammed together like sardines in a can, the fish eat and defecate in concentrations so dense, they coat the ocean floor with a toxic sludge that is destroying coral reefs, among other ocean life. After reading Fishman’s book, I quit eating salmon that isn’t wild-caught.

All of this raises the question: If I can give up farm-raised salmon over environmental concerns, why can’t I give up incandescence? Admittedly, CFLs and LEDs have improved greatly in the past 20 years or so. But I’m more interested in compromise. A détente with the communist impulse, if you will.

Because I go to bed early, my light usage is relatively minor compared with that of superusers who burn the midnight oil. Perhaps we could implement “incandescent offsets,” sort of like carbon credits. I get to use pink lightbulbs in exchange for going to bed by, say, 9 p.m. at least five nights a week. Obviously, this would work on the honor system.

Guest Opinion: Artificial light harms our bodies and souls. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Also, because young people don’t as much need the softening effects of incandescence, efficiency bulbs could be mandatory for people under, say, 45 — or 60 — and let mature Americans enjoy sunset lighting during their remaining years. Finally, we could eliminate daylight saving time, thus allowing us to go to bed earlier during the summer months.

By now, you’re surely wondering where I found my 200 lightbulbs. I learned about them through a discreet network of fellow light connoisseurs — and I never reveal my sources. I could tell you, but ... you know how the rest goes. When I last checked, only 300 remained.

Even these aren’t the pinks I know and love, alas; I could find only a few of those, and I’m still praying for a black market. The ones I ordered allegedly mimic my old pale pinks. I’ll let you know. But if bulb-makers are smart, they’ll quickly duplicate the GE pale pink bulb that projects the desired illumination.

Good luck — and hurry!

P.S.: That prettiest woman I mentioned? Turns out, it was the pink lightbulbs.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLyxtc2ipqerX2d9c3%2BOaW1oamNkuaqzx62gp59dl8KtrtJmoKebkaOxpr%2FCnqWtZZWtvaq%2BwK2gqKZf