And here I thought that (an incentive) was provided by the price the producer of the light bulb charged and the price the producer/distributor of the energy to run the light charged. You seem to be implying that an additional “incentive” is needed in the form of a gun pointed at someone’s head (i.e., tax). If the producer of the bulb and/or the energy is not paying all of the costs associated with such production, why not just set things up such that they do pay all such costs (and NOT by way of taxes!!)?

Fact is, there are externalities to energy consumption. As a society, we simultaneously want cheap energy and efficient energy consumption.. The right way to accomplish that is to let energy be generally cheap but to force people to internalize externalities in places where real efficiency gains are available.

GE claims to be developing technology that will make incandescent bulbs more efficient. Banning incandescent technology is the wrong answer. But providing incentives to move people towards more efficient use of public energy-production infrastructure is smart government.