3,000 lights in the attic

His enormous stockpile is the fruit of a frenzied summer shopping spree. For weeks,he spent many of his waking hours on the phone and online,tracking down vendors and snapping up enough incandescent bulbs to last him the rest of his life.

The buying binge was necessary,he said,to beat a ban by the European Union. As of September 1,the manufacture and import of 100-watt incandescent bulbs have been outlawed within the EU,to be followed by their dimmer brethren in coming years. Once current stocks are gone,such bulbs will join Thomas Edison in the history books.

It will run out, Ziegler warned of the limited supply,and everyone will be sorry.

The ban is part of the EUs effort to retard global warming. The object is to encourage people to switch from energy-wasting incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lamps,which last longer and are up to 75 per cent more efficient.

For EU officials,its all about the math. Ditching old-fashioned bulbs,they say,will save nearly 40 billion kilowatt-hours a year by 2020equivalent to the output of 10 power stations. Australia has already abandoned incandescent bulbs,and the US is set to begin phasing them out in the next few years as well.

But not everyone considers it such a bright idea. The ban has been met with some resistance in Europe,showing what happens when the collective goal of greening the planet clashes with issues of individual choice and even aesthetics.

Dissenters such as Ziegler have sprung up across the continent,people who complain that fluorescent lamps are inferior,more expensive and come with their own environmental problems. Art galleries fret over how best to display their works without the warm glow cast by incandescent bulbs. A petition to save the conventional bulb is circulating on the Internet.

In Britain,where major retailers began taking 100-watt incandescent bulbs off their shelves even earlier,in January,a retired teacher in southern England spent 800 of her pension to buy 1,000 of them.

Theres been quite a bit of consumer backlash, acknowledged Peter Hunt,chief executive of Britains Lighting Association,but he added: A lot of it we expected.

To help consumers and manufacturers get used to the change,the EU decided not to ax all incandescent bulbs at once. Last months ban covers only clear bulbs of 100 watts and all frosted ones. Clear incandescent lamps of 60 and 40 watts are to be eased out by September 2012.

A writer and former art critic,Ziegler sees the EUs ban as unnecessarily extreme. Why not slap a tax on the old-fashioned bulbs,rather than outlaw them entirely?

The law just says you cant use the best lightbulb ever invented, he grumbled. A few months ago,with the September 1 deadline looming like a neon-lit sign,he decided to take pre-emptive action.

With typical German precision,he went through every room of his apartment with a floor plan in hand,marking an X wherever there was a light fixtureabout 25 in alland noting what kind of bulb it required. Then he took the checklist to his local vendor,who worked out how many bulbs Ziegler would need for the next decade.

I said forget 10 years, Ziegler recalled. I want a lifetime supply.

That,though,posed an unanticipated question. At 50,he suddenly had to ponderor guesshow much longer he expected to live. He drafted his wife into his existential contemplations,and together,like actuaries,they finally decided that a lifetime supply meant enough bulbs to last 30 years.

Laying his hands on 3,000 incandescent bulbs was another story. He cleaned out one supplier and went on to the next,seeking them out on the Internet. Bulky packages kept arriving at the apartment,and I was not unaware of the pitying looks of my neighbors, he confessed in a newspaper column. Thankfully,his wife supported his panic-buying,because she hates fluorescent bulbs even more than I do,Ziegler said. But that sparked yet another uncomfortable discussion. Who gets custody of the hoard in case of divorce?