Posted on 10/24/2002 1:11:19 PM PDT by RightWhale
Dark-sky Advocates to Push for Nationwide Lighting Reforms [light pollution]
Energy and lighting specialists from throughout the U.S. and Canada are gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, this weekend for a meeting of the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). They'll be taking aim at the ubiquitous pall of urban skyglow known as "light pollution," its effects on our health and our society, and what can be done to halt and reverse its spread.
Members of the news media are welcome to attend the sessions on Friday, October 25th. These invited talks and panel discussions will take place at the Museum of Science in Boston. Speakers are nationally recognized experts from the lighting industry, government agencies, power-utility companies, and others from the fields of medicine, environmental science, and astronomy. Key areas of discussion will include:
-- the glare and energy waste associated with poor-quality lighting
-- the effects of light at night on humans and wildlife
-- community and commercial efforts to improve lighting practices
A press conference will be held at 12:45 p.m. in Cahners Theater at the Museum of Science.
The second day of the meeting, Saturday, October 26th, will convene at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. Due to limited seating, we are not encouraging attendance by members of the news media. Instead, we will try to arrange interviews on Friday with the Saturday sessions' invited speakers and other experts in attendance.
Satellite images dramatically reveal that roughly of a third of the light used outdoors escapes upward, totally wasted, into the night sky. The IDA estimates that each year in the United States, more than $1 billion is spent to generate this wasted light -- resulting in the needless burning of some 6,000,000 tons of coal annually.
Founded in 1988, the IDA has about 10,000 members in all 50 states and 70 countries. Its 450 organizational members include lighting engineers and manufacturers, security personnel, government agencies, and municipalities. The IDA is a nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to preserving and protecting the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.
a.cricket
Everything is legislated. 1000s of times a day across the country this that and the other is legislated. What is special about this that makes cricket chirp?
It is not just this and you just said it. Everything is legislated or almost anyway. Once you begin making rules you have to enforce them. What are you going to do? Slap fines on people who don't comply?
Convince people to do something of their own free will and they will do so cheerfully. Point out to businesses that not only will they save money but it will do wonders for community relations and watch them rush to be the first. Try to force it on them and watch them sneak around the law and then instead of a tax cut there will be a tax increase to fund Bureau of Light and Darkness. And you have L&D enforcement officers running around with light meters and hauling off people who don't respect the dark and protests with people singing "This little light of mine / I’m going to let it shine..."
Okay, so I got carried away but the point is valid.
And, if you think that it would never get abused so badly, allow me to direct your attention to the anti-smoking nonsense. Whoever would have thought that a parent could lose custody of their child because they smoked? Or that a business would not be allowed to have a smoking section? Or that in some places it would be illegal to have a smoke on your porch?
I just ask that you please consider the can of worms before you open it. Afterwords it will be too late. Undoing a law is not so easy as getting one passed.
a.cricket
I would shorten it to BOD. Light encroachment is already in many land use zoning codes around the country. Code enforcement relies on complaints from the private sector to be filed before they send the code enforcement officer out and begin writing nasty-grams. We don't actually need more regulations. The State or Municipality can and do write lighting specs into their own specification code for public construction purchases [schools, streets, ballparks] made by State or Municipal agencies and leave the private sector alone. We can still file on McDonalds or K-Mart parking lot lights in either case. That shouldn't be a problem for little shining lights, should it?
Green? Did I miss something here? Have the aliens already invaded? Has the cheese from the moon started to get runny?
Maybe, then again maybe not. Face it, no matter how you dim the lights, put shields on them or whatever you will still not be able to see the night sky very well because the sheer quantity of lights that you get in a large city. So where do you stop?
If you want to have a clear view of the night sky in a city there is only one way to do that, you have to cut off the electric power.
a.cricket
Right, the circumstances that would do that are probably the same as would cut off the food and gasoline supply. Cutting off the electric grid also has the effect of improving shortwave radio by a factor of a million or so. But if all we have left is a really dark sky and some shortwave to a few radio amateurs on other continents, we would be in big trouble. All things considered, light pollution isn't the worst thing on the list.
I do like star gazing but not at that price.
a.cricket
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