This is why you have something called a Life Cycle Analysis. I suspect for CFLs it's pretty straightforward - the amount of electricity saved plus the longer lifetime (given proper usage) outweights things like more materials going into CFLs and higher shipping costs and retooling factories and so forth. I agree with the mention of shipping as I beleive people need to look more carefully before assuming that something is Enviromentally Friendly becuase some whackjob who wouldn't know the first thing about thermodynamics said so. Mentioning transportation cost is not ludicrous, it's something that needs to be looked at.

Prof Frink: Of course the real humans... won't... won't burn so fast...