and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Australia may become the first country to outlaw traditional lightbulbs (incandescents) in favour of compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs):

"If the whole world switches to these bulbs today, we would reduce our consumption of electricity by an amount equal to five times Australia's annual consumption of electricity," [Australian Environment Minister] Turnbull said..

.. US energy policy think-tank the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that replacing a 75-watt incandescent light bulb with a 20-watt compact fluorescent saves 1,300 pounds (590 kilograms) of carbon dioxide over the life of the bulb.

Five times Australia's electricity consumption is only about 7% of the world's consumption, but one step at a time, right? It is true that CFLs are pretty dandy, with much longer life spans and lower electricity usage:

The CFL, therefore, will save $36.00 in electricity (compared to the incandescent bulb) during its rated life. Some American discount stores sell packages of CFLs for about $2.75 per CFL and incandescent bulbs for about $0.50 each, a $2.25 difference. The estimated payback period for buying the CFL instead of the incandescent bulb is, therefore, 500 hours, which is 100 days at 5 hours per evening. Two additional advantages of the CFL are that the majority of these bulbs never get beyond touch-warm, making them significantly safer for children and the elderly, and providing a reduced risk of fire in homes and offices.

Sweet. But perhaps in taking this forward-thinking step, they aren't jumping far enough? Why fluorescents when you can jump straight to LEDs?

LEDs have an extremely long life span when conservatively run: upwards of 100,000 hours, twice as long as the best fluorescent bulbs and twenty times longer than the best incandescent bulbs.

.. the average commercial [LED] currently outputs 32 lumens per watt (lm/W), and new technologies promise to deliver up to 80 lm/W..

Incandescent bulbs are much less expensive but also less efficient, generating from about 16 lm/W for a domestic tungsten bulb to 22 lm/W for a halogen bulb.

With CFLs in the 60 lm/W range, LEDs might not be the cheapest at this moment in time but it seems fairly obvious that they will become the cheapest solution by the time any country manages to actually outlaw incandescents.

Meanwhile, California is on the bandwagon:

The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act" would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.