“Plus you have to add in all the waste from mining and processing that much HG from ore. All in China.. Yikes.”
Yes, a lot IS mined in China; but the U.S. mines tons of coal for power generation as well.
However, it is incorrect for the CFL pushers to claim that CFLs do NOT make a net addition of mercury to the environment. They do. No matter how efficient they are, their efficiency does not change one speck of the burning of coal for power; so whatever CFL’s contain in mercury does become a net addition to the environment.
Also, I believe that getting rid of the mercury in the coal burning process will be easier to achieve with technology than the big brother regime that would be required to keep CFLs out of the landfills.
Sorry for the late reply. I would disagree with your assertion. You claim that reducing the amount of electricity we use for lighting won’t cause us to burn less coal in power plants. This is true on it’s face. We aren’t about to shut down any power plants because people switch to more efficient lighting. Instead, if we use less electricity to achieve the same amount of work, (work in this case being light,) we are going to lower the rate at which demand increases. This means that we will open fewer new power plants than we otherwise would need. Some of these power plants that we won’t open would have burned coal. That’s where the savings comes from. Obviously, using technology to find cleaner ways to burn coal and other fossils is very important as well. In the long run, plant technology is the most important thing as far as mercury pollution is concerned.