Another thought about the
embodied energy of CFLs:
I've never actually taken a dead CFL apart and weighed the glass to compare it to an incandescent. (Let's just agree that the glass is the most energy-intensive part.) The CFL has to have more glass mass, since the spiral has more surface area. (In fact, for any fluorescent, the light output is proportional to the surface area.)
So, let's say the CFL takes 4x as much energy to manufacture. So what? They also last 6x to 10x as long, so it's still not a false economy.
You can buy 10k hour CFLs at the big orange store for $10 US per six-pack. At that rate, they are an economic no-brainer for the consumer (~$0.09/kWh) even if they last no longer than 1k hour incandescent.
The hour life expectancy, btw, is MTBF (mean time between failures, or more plainly, the average). So after 1k hours, 50% of A-19 incandescents will have failed, and 50% will still work. After 10k hours, 50% of CFLs will have failed, and 50% will still work. Remember that the next time a customer asks you to explain why his bulbs don't last very long!
So even if your CFL only lasts half it's advertised lifetime, it still used 25% of the kWh, and cost the consumer less, and I very much doubt that the increased embodied energy negated these gains.
