You're trying to be too sensible about it. For their position on sensibility w.r.t. waste, see cash for clunkers, electronics recycling loopholes or recycling (chemical and energy waste) itself, or windmill policy in turning off windmills at night if a dead bird is found near them (when a maintenance person falls off a windmill and dies, they keep going, though). The rules change, in the end, it's probably not a net savings, and we'll get something stupid but they can keep the machine of legislating things obsolete going, just as the light bulb cartel did in the '30s (though by collusion and not legislation).
I wish I would've known about this when I put my T12 fixtures in about 5 years ago. I only have four, and one in the kitchen, but it's interesting that they go through the farce of energy saving. I don't remember the last time I heard about grid strain because of lighting. I wonder how total net power consumption changes will be compared to heating, water heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning power consumption - not even touching on industry non-lighting consumption. It'll probably be a net zero change after backing out the energy used in manufacturing and transporting the new fixtures.