Australian politicians have already pushed through pro-CFL, anti-Edisonian legislation, enforcing a massive technology switch. The European Union is heading that way pell-mell. And there are Dems and Reps in Congress talking about doing the same thing, here.

Why?

To save energy! To save the environment! They look at the big picture and imagine every incandescent replaced with a CFL, and they calculate just how much less coal would have to be burned, and . . . they become impatient.

That’s all it is, really. They are impatient with Americans’ learning curve. Americans are indeed switching forms of lighting, at least in many halls and rooms of their homes and offices, but a few politicians and environmentalists just can’t wait. They want to force more people to switch faster.

Funny thing is, there’s mercury in those CFLs. Mercury is what makes the light. And, when you break one of those bulbs, clean-up should be done carefully.

Worse yet, if you listen to those same people (politicians, environmental alarmists) about how dangerous even the smallest amount of mercury can be, you’d hire thousand-dollar clean-up crews every time you break a bulb.

So much for cheaper!

Of course, the amount of mercury in a CFL is smaller than in an old thermometer, which, if you’re my age, you probably deliberately broke apart to play with the quicksilver when you were a kid. And lived to tell the tale.

That’s common sense talking, though. Politicians and alarmists, on the other hand, tend to lurch in the other direction, and usually we’d expect them to outlaw CFLs, not mandate them. CFL tech is precisely the kind of tech that the Ralph Naders of this world tend to hate: the kind that corporations “push” on us “regardless” of the “harm” it “inflicts.”

Truth is, of course, this is a world of trade-offs. Nothing is completely safe. And even environmentalists find themselves backing one dangerous technology over another. Why? To save the planet. (See any parallels between years of opposition to nuclear power, and the rising tide of environmentalists who now support it?)

I don’t want the planet to go down any more than you do. But I think most sensible people can agree that outlawing incandescent bulbs is no way to save anything but the principle of totalitarian coercion. Let the market choose this one — that is, let people choose. Let them choose which costs to consider, which risks to worry about more.

And tell all who would forbid us Edison’s technology that we’d rather fight than . . . have them tell us how to switch.