There is too much light wasted going *upward* instead of downward. It does no good to illuminate the sky and not the ground.
I love to look at the stars on a dark night. Did you ever see the Milky Way, all the stars of the Little Dipper, the "Great Nebula" in Orion?
Did you ever see the Perseid Meteor Shower, the Pleiades, the "Double Cluster" in Perseus, the Andromeda Galaxy?
This EPA concern is NOT without merit. Your reactions are.
Well, I have observed a “double cluster” on occasion. :>)
I have to stand with those who desire reduced street lights. I agree first of all, that there ARE places where lighting is needed, but for the most part, there’s way too much.
Most homes do have a porch light that they can control with a switch, or aim and direct the lighting. Today, cars have headlights as well so street lighting isn’t has necessary as it was at turn of the century, in cities.
I find a lot of lights at night to be hard on my eyes. Indoor lighting isn’t what it used to be since the demise of the lightbulb..the new ones simply suck! But outside, those darn lights blind me! When the power goes down, it’s as if the whole world lights up.
We have a retired police officer in our apartment building who demanded better lighting at our apartment building. He wanted flood lights and lights working at every door which he claimed would cut down on theft. Not so!, I argued. All those lights do is let the criminal element know where all out-door goodies are when nobody is looking. Now they can easily see what they’re doing. Sure enough, car theft attempts have increased, especially where the floodlights are the best.
Apparently my neighbors agree with me because they all unscrewed their outdoor lightbulbs...the ones next to their doors. Course, in the summer, the lights draw more bugs.
I like it dark because if I decided to creep out onto my balcony and watch the parking lot, I can’t be seen! Not good to be a well lit target!
And of course, as mentioned, the stars can’t be seen. I love to watch the stars and celestial events whether I have a telescope or not. It’s hard to find a spot where that can be done. Either a building is in the way, or a tree, or a street light floods out the view.
I’m told that one reason why night lighting is hard on the eyes is because it’s the design of the eye to open the pupil nice and wide to let a lot of light in. But when the eyes are assaulted with night lights, 1) it hurts! 2) the light forces the pupil to contract which LIMITS how much one can see.
How many people have never seen their shadow by star light? That’s right, star light! You can actually see your shadow by the light of the milky-way when there are no other lights around. You can see the deer grazing in the fields by star light, that’s how sensitive our eyes really are.
If you’ve ever actually seen the milky way, have you ever seen it’s colors? It’s soooo beautiful and loaded with pastel pinks, greens, blues and golds. There are meteor showers we can’t see on a nightly basis, because they are so flooded out.
Does the excess lighting harm the environment? I think so. Birds have difficulty sleeping, and who knows what the light does to it’s breeding cycle. Many birds are provoked to breed depending on day/night length and brightness. Birds eat more bugs than any pesticide, yet we flood our environment with pesticides.
I was watching a documentary about mouse infestations in Australia. They need more owls, hawks and snakes (nonpoisonous) to control them. The environment has built in, a system for balance, and somehow, Australia has lost it’s balance.
Too much light at the wrong times, of the wrong spectrum absolutely HAS to impact the environment. It’s amazing to hear birds singing at night! That’s just not right unless it’s a night bird.
I’m far from being a tree hugger, but I do care for my microenvironment and what happens there. I care that I can’t see the world around me, or that it’s functioning in an off way.
And I care that I’m stepping on glass broken out from a well light automobile that someone tried to steal, but I can’t see the glass because I’m blinded by the wrong light in the wrong places.
EPA = Amateur Astronomers' Protection Agency?
OK.
It kind of sucks that my front yard view is limited to Orion and about a dozen assorted stars, it's true that the Griffith Observatory looks a bit odd sitting right above Hollywood, and I have to drive over an hour to get a good sky view anywhere but W & SW from Point Fermin.
But unconstrained street lights (which could and should be better designed) bother me a lot less than the constantly blinking examples that account for about 10% of local inventory.
When I found that dusk to dawn 'security lights' only made it easier for someone to hit the far corner of my property I switched to downward slanting motion sensors - not because any owls were confused by the light (because they were having a field day before and still would be if my neighbor the rat farmer hadn't missed too many mortgage payments).
"Light pollution" may be a pain in the eyepiece but it does not endanger my health or any damn trash fish or forest dweller. Like sewer treatment plants and traffic signs, like property taxes and pot holes, it's part of an urban environment in a century when very, very, few of us are subsistence farmers and all the "proud savages" of yore are running casinos.
It's embarrassing to see someone on FR justify further government expansion for the questionable benefit of a small group or merely for nostalgia sake.