Starting last Christmas, the Biden Department of Energy has been on a tear to punish Americans for having almost the entire contents of a middle-class home, including gas stoves, ovens, clothes washers, refrigerators, and air conditioners. All are being made less useful under mandates designed to limit climate change.

Last week the Biden climate change policy adopted new rules ending the sale of most new incandescent bulbs — the pear-shaped orbs with glowing wire centers — along with most fluorescent light bulbs.  Americans will now have to buy light-emitting (LED) bulbs. It’s a big cultural shift — fewer than half of households currently report using mostly or exclusively LEDs.

The mandate requiring LEDs will hit the poor most. While more than half of households with an income of more than $100,000 per year use LEDs, just 39 percent of households with an income of $20,000 or less use them.

A coalition lead by The Competitive Enterprise Institute reports: “While LEDs are more efficient and generally longer-lasting….they currently cost more than incandescent bulbs and are inferior for certain functions such as dimming.”

The impact on global CO2 emissions of forcing Americans to buy lightbulbs they don’t want is de minimus compared to a policy of getting China to clean up its air pollution – but Beijing is too busy trying to buy up the world to care about global warming.