Good morning;
The complaint about incandescent light bulbs is almost amusing. The chief argument is their "efficiency;" they "waste" over 95 percent of their energy as heat. No more than 5 percent of the energy results in light.
To which I reply; "So?" Where are the light bulbs located? They are inside the house. Out here, we normally heat our houses. That energy converted to heat is not "lost;" it stays inside the house and helps also to warm the house. If anything, the major effect is to reduce the "on" cycle time of the heating system, but the overall energy consumed to keep the house inside temperature comfortable for us remains the same. I admit that in Arizona in the summertime, this effect may not be what you want, but up here in the Pacific Northwest, it does come in handy.
As others have pointed out, it may be time to get a few more lamps put away in reserve to keep the old condenser type enlargers going.
Regarding a comment in the New York Times article mentioned, Light Emitting Diodes (LED) are not yet used in "street lights," the high-power lights on poles that light up the roadway surface at night, but they are used in traffic signals at our intersections. In that application, the LED traffic signal displays reduced our electrical power consumption at our intersections by 90 percent. Over their expected lifetime, these traffic signal displays pay for themselves with the saving in electricity. There are some down side arguments to this, though. We no longer go out to each intersection once per year to perform routine maintenance and checking of the traffic signals. That was more than just changing the light bulbs. We also replaced broken parts, missing screws, tightened mounting hardware that loosens in the wind over months of constant vibration, and other things. That preventive maintenance is now lost. The functional reliability of our traffic signals is now somewhat less.
