Photograph: The Guardian
I know this isn't something I should admit to Guardian readers, but I like tungsten bulbs. This somehow feels tantamount to saying to saying I want single-handedly to melt the polar ice-cap, that I would have been a rabid supporter of Adolf Hitler, Joe McCarthy and Pol Pot, that I support the actions of the international oil industry in all its creepy ways.
I apologise, of course, for mentioning the "T" word (tungsten is evil, evil is tungsten), but these electric light bulbs, put into mass production by GEC in 1906, cast a beautiful glow that has yet to be replicated or bettered by rival and more energy-efficient forms of lighting. Fluorescent light is cold, flickering and strangely misty; it also dances in front of the eyes and makes many people feel uncomfortable.
One real problem with so much of the current discussion about energy consumption is that even while raging about how much greener we are than the spawn-of-the-devil, tungsten people next door, we seem to need ever more artificial light in our homes and places of work. Many homes are lit as if they were trying to mimic conditions in an operating theatre. And, yet, rooms nearly always look best, as darkness falls, lit by just a few warm lamps. Equally, British people expect to sit in their homes throughout the winter dressed in summer clothes, or less, and will crank up the heating while berating tungsten bulbs. The tungsten bulb has, like the 4x4, become the target of a fashionable "greenwash" witch-hunt.
It's perfectly true that the tungsten bulb is a lot less efficient than both fluorescent and LED lights, but can't it be used in moderation? It's a handsome little device in its own right, it produces a happy, warm light and, assuming you don't expect your British home to be as warm as the tropics all year round, it gives off enough warmth to allow you to turn down the heating and so reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
I suppose today the tungsten bulb is something like the steam locomotive was - or how it was perceived to be - half a century ago: an inefficient and primitive Victorian relic, albeit one with character and charm.
The steam locomotive was effectively killed off by a desire, common among railway managements, to be seen to be "modernising" at all costs. The tungsten bulb is destined to go the same way. Even if this is the right thing to happen, when is someone in the lighting industry going to come up with such warm and happy light again?
