The familiar incandescent bulb is getting a bad rap. It is in fact 100 percent efficient, not 25 percent or 30 percent efficient, as we are being told. It converts 100 percent of the electrical energy consumed into light and heat. It is both a lamp and a little space heater.

A light bulb in your house is going to waste some energy, in heat, in the summertime, but for most of the year, in most of the United States, we use heating in our homes, and the light bulb positively contributes to that. We also use lamps in our homes less in summer than winter because of longer hours of daylight. Heat pumps run on electricity and produce heat in the wintertime, and little space heaters, or incandescent bulbs, contribute to it.

Use your mercury or LED lamps outdoors if you like, but let me keep my old-fashioned bulbs in my home. I have never felt that the lamp in the corner was making it unbearably hot in my house, and in the winter, I like its warmth. Incandescent bulbs also are safer, and the light they give out is much more pleasant.

It is not a subject on which our democratic government needs to be a dictator and tell us what to do or come into our homes and tell us we cannot have a little heater and a light source all in one unit. Our government has bigger things to do, and this isn't its business anyway.

Daniel H. Daniels

Beaufort