Yes, we all can get behind this idea. Yep, I'm going to save my energy by sitting on the couch and drinking a beer. I'm saving lots of energy. I'm not polluting the atmosphere with my gasoline powered mower, I'm not clogging my lawn with clippings, and I'm not using plastic bags to clean up the yard waste. Yes, it is rather wrongheaded to think of energy savings this way, but lightbulbs were made more efficient in sort of the same way.
Lightbulbs use electricity to heat a filament of tungsten or some other alloy.
The electricity heats it so much that it throws off light as well as heat. To keep the filament from burning, the filament is surrounded by nothing. Yet, even though there's ideally no oxygen inside a lightbulb, the filament does erode. Not by oxidation, but by sublimination. It didn't melt, because you're driving through weather that's below the freezing mark.