WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The Biden administration’s ban on the sale of new incandescent light bulbs has taken effect, claiming the move will ultimately save consumers money while critics decry the elimination of individual choice and assert disadvantages of new LED bulbs.

USA Today reported that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regulation imposes a minimum efficiency standard of 45 lumens per watt for any newly sold general-purpose light bulbs, with exceptions for bulbs in appliances such as microwaves, plant, bug, or traffic lights, and certain other products. The rule effectively disqualifies common incandescent bulbs, which produce 15 lumens per watt, in favor of LED bulbs, which range from 70-100 lumens per watt.

The DOE claims LED lights use 75% less energy, last 25-50 times longer than incandescent bulbs, will save the public almost $3 billion a year in energy bills, and are more environmentally friendly. “Over the next 30 years, the rules are projected to cut carbon emissions by 222 million metric tons – an amount equivalent to the emissions generated by 28 million homes in one year,” the department says.

But critics are far from convinced.

The Western Journal reported that Republican lawmakers such as Reps. Bob Good of Virginia and Andy Barr of Kentucky have decried the new regulation as an infringement on Americans’ freedom to choose the products they prefer, and some have suggested that LEDs are more likely to induce migraines in some people.

And whether or not the projected energy savings actually materialize, the shift comes during an administration that has presided over inflation considerably raising Americans’ cost of living. CNBC reported in April that since April 2021, “the cost of essentials like groceries, utilities and gas increased by 20% or more,” the “cost of all items on the index increased by 13%,” and “wages have not kept up with the rapid rate of inflation across a broad array of goods and services.”

Further, conservatives aren’t the only ones to complain. In March, New York Magazine’s Tom Scocca wrote that his high hopes for LED bulbs had been dashed by “a series of letdowns: a faded look to the page of a storybook, a flicker in the corner of the eye, those sudden unexplained failures or half-failures. A slate-blue sock that was indistinguishable from a charcoal-gray one till I brought them over by the window. A certain unreality was creeping in.”

“A technology that was once the epitome of simplicity (‘How many people does it take to change a lightbulb?’) has become an ever-branching set of complications,” he wrote. “Where before I would pick up a pack of 60-watt soft-white incandescents at the hardware store, I now search the internet for the highest-rated equivalent LEDs, then systematically cross-check those equivalences point by point. Everything you used to know about indoor illumination is outmoded.”

Scocca qualified his grievances by declaring that “[e]cologically, the case for LEDs is unassailable” and “[e]conomically and practically, too, they’re a godsend,” adding that he found it “embarrassing to resent a product that’s doing this much good.” Still, “right now, it’s one more thing that overpromises and under-delivers. What we’re starting to glimpse is a new phase in which good light, once easy to achieve and available to everyone, becomes a luxury product or the province of technological obsessives.”

The “need” to sacrifice such conveniences in exchange for reduced carbon emissions is predicated on the narrative of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the view that human activity, rather than natural phenomena, is primarily responsible for Earth’s changing climate, a longstanding article of faith on the political Left.

Activists claim there is a “97% scientific consensus” in favor of AGW, but that number comes from a distortion of an overview of 11,944 papers from peer-reviewed journals, 66.4% of which expressed no opinion on the question; in fact, many of the authors identified with the AGW “consensus” later spoke out to say their positions had been misrepresented.

Further, contrary to claims that people are dying due to “climate change,” data from the International Disasters Database shows that “climate related deaths” (i.e., deaths due to floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures) have dramatically and steadily declined since the 1920s.

AGW proponents suffered a blow in 2010 with the discovery that their leading researchers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, East Anglia Climate Research Unit, and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration had engaged in widespread data manipulation, flawed climate models, misrepresentation of sources, and suppression of dissenting findings.

In March 2019, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore called AGW alarmism a “complete hoax and scam,” a “kind of toxic combination of religion and political ideology” that is “as bad a thing that has happened to science in the history of science.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration maintains that “climate change is a clear and present danger to the United States.”