I live in one of the most light-polluted areas in the world. Even Orion is hard to pick out, and even lunar eclipses visibly more muted than elsewhere.
The main source of the worst pollution is not street lights. Instead, it’s industrial pollution coming from one of the largest collections of greenhouses worldwide a couple km. Many of them have growlights on all night long. On an overcast night, the sky is orange and purple - orange is the older technology with modern leds being purple.
That said, i am hopeful for the future here. Between 2012 and 2018 the brightest areas have already become a little less bright. Let’s hope that trend continues.
Oh shit, it’s that ‘eco-friendly’ agriculture of the future, is it? I guess you are from NL? I remember, from when I was little, my dad cursing about ‘holländische Gewächshaustomaten’ just to buy equally horrible tomatoes from Spain …
I’ve noticed the same trend in PT. From 2001 to 2012, lights being added to the surrounding hills. Then they started switching off every second lamp, during Covid possibly more. Let’s hope for some dark, quiet times.
Indeed, I live in The Hague, just a short hop from the Westland (where all the tomatoes, cucumbers and bell peppers are from). At least I can say I can get very local produce if I go the supermarket 😅.
Even the “water bombs” (as we call them here) situation is improving. There are some really interesting new producers that actually focus on flavor instead of yield. The price naturally is high, but I’m enjoying Dutch tomatoes for the first time ever.
why they talking about wasting light like its a finite resource?
But it IS a finite resource. To produce light, you need energy. Even if you use renewables, you can only cover so much area of the planet with solar panels and wind generators. In a world run on electricity that is produced by limited means, we should consider where we want to use each kWh (‘bag of electricity’). Do you really want to render that image? Have that status light on all day? It’s small things, but they do add up.
Youre underestimating either how much electricity we can generate, or how efficient lights are nowadays. Way more energy is going into heating applications.
Because dark streets mean more muggings, more burglaries, and more car accidents.
Cities are slowly adding “blinders” to streetlights, and homes are switching to motion activated lights — but this will take time because most of it is only replaced when the previous fixture fails.
