Re: I watched Oprah last week,

Excellent start in fact. I think that changing your light bulbs from standard to fluorescent is one of the simplest and highest impact changes that everyone can do to help fix the planet. This weekend I noticed that Home Depot was actually giving away free fluorescent bulbs as a promotion for Earth Day. I am almost all fluorescent in my home and plan on converting the rest of my bulbs by month's end. The only difficulty that I've found (minor) is that if you have a switch to control the brightness of the light a fluorescent bulb will not work - at least I haven't found one that will actually adjust in brightness - it must be a standard on/off switch. At any rate, this represents only two switches in my house so we're also on the way to using full fluorescents. One thing to be aware of is that not all fluorescents are alike - be sure to look for Energy start compliant ones so that you'll actually end up saving energy. Some of the cheaper Chinese fluorescents will actually not give you the savings that you may think. Congrats on moving forward with your own Green Efforts.

- Joseph