Now enviro-policy to “end light pollution” has France on track to look like North Korea at night:
From The Guardian:
Lights out – France to force shops and offices to go dark overnight
French light pollution law is expected to save 250,000 tonnes of C02 a year
The French ecology minister, Delphine Batho, said she hoped the law would change attitudes in France and help the country become a pioneer in reducing light pollution.
Full story here.
We’ve come so far to rid ourselves of the dark, only to have the lights forcibly turned off by zealots.
Luboš Motl writes about the issue
“Light pollution” is quoted as another justification. I’ve seen some movies about “light pollution” and although one could a priori think that this could be a legitimate concern, I think that all the people claiming that light pollution is a problem are Luddite lunatics, too. There’s just lots of places on Earth where light pollution is nearly non-existent. You may still go there. It’s probably not too important because not too many people are going there.
Maybe “bad astronomer” Phil Plait will move to France or North Korea now, we can only hope.
Locally, the idea of turning off lights has found favor in plans forged by the lunatic fringe that inhabits our town’s “sustainability committee”, run by Former Mayor Ann Schwab, who managed to sneak in the “climate action plan” in a meeting few attended on the night of the last election in 2012. Predictably, it was approved.
Since these folks on the council seem to worship the European way of doing things, I predict they’ll soon follow with the same edict. We have a lone volunteer staffed Chico Community Observatory in the town’s Bidwell park that they fought tooth and nail 10 years ago (I know, I was a part of it then), and they’ll now likely use it as a means to an end since, “Light pollution” was discussed at the onset.
DARN, sorry the chart did not translate from the little square we type in to the post.
[Reply: Just post the link. — mod.]
I should probably add I have no problem with motion detector lights as an option but I think government should BUTT OUT! If they want less light pollution they should start with all the lighting the government controls first hand, street lighting, government offices… instead of going after business.
To me this sounds like a real lazy arse stunt to mollify a vocal minority group and not a well thought out move.
Light Pollution != Light.
Light pollution may be interpreted by green zealots as any light at all, but to most people its lights spilling light where it does no good, such as straight up into the clouds.
This account sounds like HORS 251 and the work of Farrington and Painter, both of which have been discredited.
Bit of a dim bulb response there reddi kilowhat? eh? Didn’t read my whole post. Nor pick up the following post where I pointed out that the “sarc /sarc” tags went missing. Not that any of my comment was true sarcasm… Are you sure your plugging the right things into your electrical outlets?
Now Gail Combs has published above several rough study results; sadly without links to the actual studies themselves where one can determine if objective science was used. But that’s another point entirely.
I grew up in what is considered a bad neighborhood. Not any shakes on the real toughs in the inner cities, but still shunned locally. Only I didn’t know it, nor did most of my friends. Hey we lived there, didn’t everyone have this kind of life?
In daylight, one could see the gang hanging on the corner that was impossible to avoid. They and we knew for several hundred yards that people were going to pass by them. Sometimes it’s just a quick “Hey!”; other times it’s a 10-15 minute disastrous encounter where if you’re lucky you get to reach your destination. Not lucky, it’s a trip back home or to a closer friends house for some doctoring.
I never carried a wallet or valuables till my mid twenties and miles from where I lived as a teen. People in my neighborhood only ever carried the money they needed that day and sometimes your ID if the cops were being hard nosed about identifications. Even in the sixties, the police could radio back your name and address and quickly get a response back with a quite accurate description inclusing birthmarks, tattoos and known alias’s. That’s how I found out my family given nick name was an alias. Every kid I knew cheered when some nut crawled through the police station’s parking lot and scraped the ‘PO’ off of the ‘POLICE’ insignia on their cars; both sides front and back. We had ‘LICE’ patrolling for weeks; bad tempered about the topic too. Police as ‘them’ were hated; police as the cop who lived down the street was know and often loved, maybe not trusted completely, but loved as a good guy. Some kids never figured that part out.
Here’s the rub. We almost never had the same trouble at night. You always planned for the gang to be at certain hangouts and you shaded by. If they saw you and yelled, it was usually easy to outrun them then; especially if you knew where the guard dogs were chained. First ones past are usually safe; those after, well it’s kind of fun.
At night it was far more of a problem when a car’s headlights blinded you and the cars would play a kind of tag. It’s a little harder to outrun hoods in a car and requires heading across yards. Watch out for the clotheslines!
Still all of this is beyond the point. The point is wasting light! When you flush a toilet you don’t slop water and stuff all over the floor, do you? Yeah it’s an unpleasant way to think of a toilet’s function; but the beauty of it is how efficient a toilet is. Even before the eco-nuts went ranting about how water toilets can use.
Go ahead and light your dang streets! Light your yard, floodlight your neighbor’s yard; just don’t send half of the light into the air uselessly!
Gail Combs and Reddi watt; I have my doubts about the so called positive anticrime effects of brightly lit streets. Effective police patrols and involved neighbors are very effective at controlling crime. How one differentiates the effects of one from the other or even if the toughs knew to lay low for awhile to truly make a genuine case study of the topic, I do not know. This becomes a very gray psychological area where people like Lewpyandowski thrive. Science goes lacking and subjective opinions are rife.
Gail, I fully support your right to self defense! Light all the streets you want; just don’t support inefficient lighting. A photon can travel forever in a vacuum, kind of useless don’t you think sending all those photons everywhere but where they’re needed. Make sure you carry a surefire or other similar bright LED light so you can identify potential troublemakers.
When you attend your local ordinance meetings about light installations and the big proponent of their lighting selection makes a claim about how bright the lights are; ask what percentage of the light is usable at street level…
I have not read the comments so this may be a duplication.
The French, beacuse of their nuclear power, have the lowest emissions of CO2 per capita in Europe. Since most of their elecriticy comes from nuclear, not sure what the savings in CO2 emissions will be. The figure quoted may be an exageration.
If there are more road traffic deaths, or more crime, I wonder whether legal proceedings can be pursued against these public servants for what is a foreseeable outcome of this policy change.
Sorry, OT, but interesting to see on the night satellite image so much artificial light off the east coast of South Korea. Is the Korean fishing fleet warming the sea?
This post and the endless wittering on that’s followed it is a real disappointment.
What’s wrong with turning off the lights in empty shops and offices? I wonder whether common sense might also apply to wasting energy lighting up billboards after 1am or shining lights onto the side of buildings and bridges for ‘aesthetic purposes’ all night.
Pointless references to carbon dioxide aside, saving energy by turning off un-needed lights is a belated onset of common sense; the article makes no reference at all to turning off streetlights, so the wailing and gnashing of teeth over imagined muggings in the imaginary darkened streets is every bit as demented as the wailing and gnashing of teeth over imagined consequences of an imagined 2 degree temperature gain.
Does everyone contributing here leave every light on in their house 24 hours a day just to irritate pesky astronomers?
The comments here read like the dedicated non-thinker cheer-leader’s comments I expect to read when the Guardian or SkS goes skeptic bashing.
Thinking people don’t have to lash out negatively at every proposal that comes with a claimed ‘ecofriendly’ tag; especially when they actually make sense for once.
@richard verney
About 80% of French electricity is nuclear, the rest is from other non-fossil sources. A fraction (like 2%) is from fossil fuel.
This lights-off is solely done to throw a bone to the Green dogmatics they shared the electionlist with since what the Green econuts really want is that france shuts down all nuclear reactors.
Why is beyond me, but Green econuts don’t deal with reason, only with dogmas and fantasies.
As with all laws the french population don’t like it’ll be largely ignored and is totally symbolic.
Erny72 says:
February 6, 2013 at 9:16 am
Yeah, those goddam “aesthetic purposes”, I hate them too, I wouldn’t let one single lumen of light get used for something frivolous like that …
Someone comes in and wants to pass a law based on CO2, and you mumble about “pointless references to CO2 aside”? Miss the point much? I love folks like you. You’re all too willing to tell everyone in the country how to live their lives.
Clearly you don’t understand the issue at issue here. Let me give you a parallel example.
Erny, suppose someone came into your house where you were eating your eggs for breakfast and said “We’re from the nutrition police, and we’ve passed a law. No eggs for breakfast, it’s too high in cholesterol”. I imaging that like most folks, you would be extremely upset, I imagine that you would wax wroth and say bad words at the people trying to make your breakfast illegal, and you might end up charged with “Assault with a Spatula”.
How would you feel if I came up to you at that point and said “Whats wrong with eating oatmeal for breakfast? Pointless references to eggs aside, improving your nutrition by not eating eggs is a belated onset of common sense.”?
I rather suspect at that point that you would think I was an officious, clueless wanker who hadn’t thought things through, but despite not having any idea what was going on, I was willing to make stupid suggestions to an angry man despite not understanding the situation … and I’d likely end up with a spatula-print on the side of my face, and deservedly so.
Whether or not oatmeal might be good for your breakfast is not the point, Etsy. The point is the use of police power to control what you eat for breakfast. The point is, if I think my building is beautiful and I want to light it at night, SO FREAKIN’ WHAT?. What business is it of yours how I spend my money? How about if I decide that you having electricity at your house is “wasting energy”, because the light shining out of your living room window at night keeps my dog awake? How is that any less valid reasoning than yours?
What is it with liberals and totalitarian tendencies? Every problem you imagine, you want to pass a law against it. I used to think it was Puritans who were terrified that somewhere, someone was having fun and it was the Puritan’s business to stop them … but now it seems that liberals like you want to take over the position of sticking your noses into peoples enjoyment.
The problem is, you’re not doing it all that well, you’re falling down on the job. For example, is a huge waste of electricity for say the “bumper cars” in the boardwalk arcades, the ones the kids love to ride, and you are just the kind of prick who would take them away from the kids because you, Erny number 72, a man without even a name, have decided what is “wasting energy”. But how come you’re not protesting the bumper cars? Because everyone knows it’s Erny’s job to decide what is “aesthetic” and what isn’t, and by god if it isn’t aesthetic, nobody better try lighting it up after dark …
I swear, there’s no need to parody you officious jerkwagons, you do such a great job of it yourselves. You want to set your self up as arbiter of what can be lit at night based on your twisted sick idea of what is aesthetic and what is worthwhile?
Spare me. You are a hilarious, puffed up prig, so inflated with your perceived self worth that you’ve lost all contact with the ground. You want to save energy? Unplug your computer, there’s a good fellow, it’s a massive energy-hog, and your energy savings will be much appreciated …
w.
Now That was a fun rant to read. WooHoo!
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 6, 2013 at 12:30 pm
…
Whether or not oatmeal might be good for your breakfast is not the point, Etsy. The point is the use of police power to control what you eat for breakfast. The point is, if I think my building is beautiful and I want to light it at night, SO FREAKIN’ WHAT?…
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Thunderous applause from behind my screen and keyboard. THANK YOU WILLIS!
Not to sidetrack to much, Willis, but the ‘breakfast police’ exists already in the form of insurers. Health insurance is less expensive if you are thin, life insurance too.
Lord, have all the misinformed of this world attached themselves to this thread? Please make these read of the, “Circadian Disruption”, they call light pollution. So the ignorant may be enlightened, or, change them into the turkeys that they are.
Especially since the french law mostly concern officebuildings which are actually only the officebuildings in Paris, La Defense, which is one huge area with only pompous officeblocks.
That’s why the law came about, since the ‘Green’ members of parliament only see Paris and imagine that the rest of France can afford to leave their lights on all the time.
That’s a;ways the problem with Greenies, they have a very narrow vision of reality.
Willis,
I’m not the thought police, a liberal, nor missing the point; this law may have been unveiled with the predictable gloating about imagined CO2 emmission reductions (which we can agree IS a pointless reference given the percentage of France’s electricity generated by CO2 emission free nuclear), but the point of it is to reduce energy cosumption and in that respect I still don’t have a problem with it. Turning off lights that aren’t burning out of necessity makes perfect sense.
Exterior lighting of buildings; “…so freakin’ what?” Well aside from being a waste; playing bagpipes in your street at 3am, so freakin’ what?
Mandating common sense by a non-invasive law requiring office and shop front lights to be extinguished after close of business might appear draconian to your good self (and others particularly when illustrated with a frivolous example of breakfast police), but do you feel strongly that the introduction of laws forbidding littering are a draconian loss of your basic human rights?
Do you also then believe that including a minimal deposit on cans or bottles in the purchase cost of a drink represents an invasion of civil liberties? Both are government policies I grew up with in South Australia and continue to ‘suffer’ in Norway and effective in reducing pollution and encouraging recycling – I’m no beardy wierdy, but don’t have a problem with it.
If you do have a problem and feel the need to ask Where do you draw the line?’ on the ballot sheet if the incumbents go too far for you.
Erny72 says:
February 8, 2013 at 9:58 am
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Erny,
Forcing private sector to consume less power by law is one argument, protecting people from bagpipe players on the street at 3 AM is in principle a separate one. Although we can only approximate what is ideal and right in a code of laws, merely because our system is imperfect, is no reason to allow majority tyranny or majority whim to rule.
In my view, the issue in both cases is property. Case 1: If it’s my property, and my power bill, then nobody has any business forcing me by law to turn my lights off. This is a big one, because it sets an extremely bad precedent; the government has no business disposing of my property unless it’s absolutely unavoidable. Case 2: On my property, if I can’t hear myself think because some fool is playing bagpipes on the corner, once again my property rights need protection. It can be hard to draw the lines, and I doubt they can be drawn perfectly, but that just makes it all the more important to pay attention to them.
Government needs to protect each of us from each other. To do that, in large part government needs to protect our property from each other and from itself.
Hear,Hear!
Exactly my thoughts. My electricity, i pay for it, i’ll do with it what i want. If the governement itself wants to switch of it’s own buildings, by all means because that’s our money.
Light and noise can both trespass onto other property imposing costs (in economics they are externalities) on others. I acknowledge a role for government or courts in keeping such trespass to reasonable levels. I agree that government shouldn’t be one of the worse offenders, and that whether lights are on or not shouldn’t be regulated beyond the extent to which there is trespass. Regulations should only require the light to be properly shielded and directed. As to crime and security, I figure in the dark, the advantage goes to those familiar with the territory, so less light means more security to me. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to see the Milky Way from our cities!
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 6, 2013 at 12:30 pmThe point is, if I think my building is beautiful and I want to light it at night, SO FREAKIN’ WHAT?.
Willis, no building on this planet is more beautiful than the stars at night, I had a neighbour like you once, liked lighting his house up like it was christmas every night, So I installed an outdoor sound system to enhance to beauty of my house at night. He got the point very soon.
Bravo, Eimear ! I don’t give a rats cloaca about CO2, but I certainly don’t understand why so many of us CO2 skeptics seem to fall into the anti-everything environmental camp. What’s so hard to understand about light shields?
BTW, the idiots who insist on telling people to turn off the lights in BUILDINGS? In the winter, at least, the lights are just as efficient as most heaters in heating the building. so they are not “saving” anything. In winter. In fact, lights are MORE efficient than things like (most) electric central heating systems.
Eimear says:
February 9, 2013 at 3:13 pm
My friend, that’s why I live in the forest … where I can step outside right now and see Orion and all of its glory. I’m a navigator, I love the stars just like you do.
malco says:
February 9, 2013 at 3:58 pm
Malco, the problem (as I said above) is not the good ideas. You have what you like, as do I. And I am wildly pro-environment, have been for years.
The problem is people passing laws to make their neighbors obey their good ideas. At some point, to me that goes too far. If you like the darkness, do what I did, move to where it’s dark. Don’t move next to the airport and then bitch about the noise from the planes. It’s not all that complex to me.
I said above, I support light shields for the street lights. But I don’t support someone passing laws to make me obey whatever whimsical ideas they have today. That’s the norm here in California … and it sucks. Bad.
w.
Nice to be able to move to dark place if you can. But not everyone is able or wealthy enough to do that. Does that mean if you live in an urban neighbourhood that you have got to tolerate all the light pollution others churn out, plus that discharged by municipal lighting authorities that think they are creating a safer environment for us all while all the time they are feathering their own nests? Some form of legislation is obviously necessary to cut the abuse because people will not self regulate. Any casual glance at NASA images of the Earth at night will reveal that the current status quo has gone beyond a joke.
Yeah, Lincon, life in a community is a bitch. If only lived by your rules things would be much better. Everyone a candle, and lights out at sundown.
Petrossa, did I say that? I don’t think so. Lighting should only be applied sparingly, on a needs must basis, where needed, when needed, in the correct amounts and using appropriate technology. This does not mean switching off every light or emulating North Korea. The technology is around to achieve this now, but in my part of the world we see precious little of it. Lighting is abused at every turn. We can achieve reduced light intrusion without loss of amenity if the will is there. Unfortunately there are vested business interests dependent on bad and excessive lighting, and this needs to be reined in. I suggest you research out the options.
Lincon Hashew says:
February 10, 2013 at 6:06 am
Thanks, Lincon. I agree with much of what you say, but not for the reason you suggest. Everyone is able to move. Period. Lots of people say that they are unable to move. If they say so, they are indeed unable to move. I read of people “trapped” in the poor pockets of West Virginia … trapped? This is America, there’s no internal travel documents, get up and move. If you say you are trapped, you are trapped. Me, I just walked out to the road and stuck out my thumb. Manuel and Maria took the bus from Guatemala to the US/Mexican border and snuck across. Just who is trapped here? Everyone who says they are trapped are indeed trapped … and no one else …
However, I also absolutely agree that humans need laws and regulations, or someone will piss in the drinking water. Not a theory, it’s been proven a million times.
As a result, it’s illegal in many cities to blast loud sound after dark. Why? Because if you live nearby, you can’t protect yourself from the sound, it rocks through every room, disrupts your conversations, blasts down through the ceiling of your apartment. So people pass laws.
In the city, though, light is everywhere. I used to live on the second floor above a liquor store at the corner of Ashby and Adeline, on the border between Berkeley and Oakland. Street lights, light from the apartment all around, neon from the liquor store, people coming and going, and everyone does the same thing in response … PULL DOWN THE FREAKIN’ SHADES.
Then the light doesn’t rock through every room, it doesn’t disrupt your conversations, it doesn’t blast down through your ceiling.
So I’m not buying the argument that we should pass laws against car headlights lighting up city streets and having the audacity to shine directly in someone’s window, just because you claim it destroys the tranquility of your second-floor apartment.
I do agree we need to be concerned about light in certain sensitive areas, for various reasons, one of them being astronomy. And cities and municipalities in the viewshed of the big astronomical telescopes have generally been cooperative in cutting down light loss to the sky … and often they agreed to do things like shade the streetlights, not just for the astronomers, but for a bozo-simple reason—it costs money to try to light up outer space, and it doesn’t accomplish a whole lot. By using reflectors to focus the streetlight where you need it, you use less light, so it’s cheaper. Plus it keeps the aliens from noticing you, always a plus, and keeps your neighborhood astronomer on your side. What’s not to like?
That is how much of the astronomy problem has been solved, or at least ameliorated, in the past. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an issue, but it’s been handled generally without legal interference.
However, this French nonsense, as well as what the city of Chico might do given their leadership, has nothing to do with light and everything to do with CO2. Otherwise, why would the French talk about lights in the interior of office buildings? I know they don’t live in glass houses or work in glass office buildings, they got as much to hide as you and me …
So I am objecting to two things here.
The first is the use of the CO2 hysteria to pass ridiculous laws, while disguising it as being about either astronomers or saving energy. I find that duplicitous.
The second is the assumption that if we see a problem (light pollution affecting telescopes), we should pass a law. Got a problem? Pass a law to fix it, that seems to be the mantra. I disagree with that entire approach. Passing a law, particularly (as in this case) a general law (turn off all lights) for a local problem (lights in the viewshed of major astronomical telescopes) should be our last option rather than our first.
Regards,
w.
Willis said “Everyone is able to move.”
Yes they are, but that doesn’t mean they can. People have jobs and other commitments that necessitate their living in urban areas. I’d love to live in a rural area, and would do so if the area could provide me with meaningful remunerative employment.
Good comments, Willis; I agree that too many laws are demanded/passed. Obviously, we won’t agree on which laws are bad and which are good. I think requiring light shields on new outdoor lights is a good law. You don’t. Fine. (Fortunately for me, I’m in a position where I’ve been able to have my way on new subdivisions, through the miracle of modern extortion, though that word’s a bit strong. 🙂
I would also support power companies giving subsidies, or outright paying for, light shields. Reduce light pollution, save energy, put light where it’s needed and wanted, keeps neighbors AND astronomers happy. As you put it so well, “What’s not to like?”
BTW, I live way, way out in the country. I’ve been unable to see stars/planets very well for the last year or so, because our State Hwy department installed 10-12 extremely bright street lights, for the purpose of lighting up the roadside so people can chain up. Last year, they left the lights on the entire year, not just when chains were needed. This year, after lots of people whined enough, they started turning off all but three of the lights. They can’t seem to cut loose on those three.
My neighbor swears he’s going to blow the lights to hell. We’ll see. Wouldn’t bother me any, that’s for sure 🙂