Protecting the dark sky: the environmental impact of light pollution and what we can do about it

Highlights

• 2024-03-13 17:45 In this episode, we will talk with Pete about how artificial lighting at night is impacting our environment, what we can do as lighting designers and users to revert this, and what technical solutions and tools we have at hand to help us protecting the dark sky. With no further introduction, we would like to welcome Pete Strasser.

• 2024-03-13 17:45 So I go way back and I’m pretty hardcore about doing that. I am a plant pathologist by degree, so I have a tremendous understanding of the way light works in nature, not merely for illuminating things, but physiological responses.

• 2024-03-13 17:48 It was rather limited. And then when I go to Yosemite and see the stunning sky, similar to what you were seeing in Chile, and I said, how come I could see this here and I can’t where I live?

• 2024-03-14 07:53 So if ordinance says you need to have ten lux on the surface and by design or error, 40 lux gets on there. They have still met the code. Yeah, they did.

• 2024-03-14 07:55 The studies that I have seen show that the motion sensor type light is the most effective as far as a crime deterrent.

• 2024-03-14 07:55 And criminals are aware of that and they don’t hang around to see if the person that was there actually flipped a switch or if there was a motion sensor. But criminals need light to see as well.

• 2024-03-14 07:59 So you will see articles written saying light pollution is reduced because we’re now using LEDs, as verified by the Veers satellite. Well, the Veers satellite isn’t seeing all of the light.

• 2024-03-14 08:02 There’s the notion of preserving what is good and restoring good to what is presently not good. So in the preservation aspect, we have our international dark Sky Places program, where we establish criteria for what would be good lighting practices for a community or an area park.

• 2024-03-14 08:03 That is a great thing on its own because then adjacent community is saying, wait a minute, I want to be part of this too. I like the idea of people coming to my place and spending money and all I had to do is turn my lights down and don’t shine them in the sky.

• 2024-03-14 08:06 We recognize that color temperature is a very, very poor metric to measure spectral power distribution or even try to help define it.

• 2024-03-14 08:08 The LEDs hold so much promise and yet have peril as well. So when the LEDs are done right, they’re really wonderful things, but they can be easily abused.

• 2024-03-14 08:10 So you start adding red, and now we’re not seeing any blue light reduction between a 3000 kelvin and a 2700 Kelvin Led.

• 2024-03-14 08:11 There needs to be some advancements, some change. What’s going to be the next light source after LEDs?

• 2024-03-14 08:13 What you don’t hear is that the endangered species of, say, a hawks billed turtle, they are not as impacted by a single wavelength light as much as other organisms.

• 2024-03-14 08:27 And those are the people that we really can connect with. The artistry part usually means that a site will not be overlit or improperly lit, that the lighting designer will take into account, pointing out architectural detail through shadow depth, recognizing that sometimes a wall wash is a bad thing, yet in some cases, it could be a good thing in the winter.

• 2024-03-14 08:37 Well, because it’s not all that interesting right now. And that’s a very difficult thing to convey to a child or someone who hasn’t seen something that says, you know what?

• 2024-03-14 08:41 Some policies about would I would say go with what the experts have said and that’d be either Cie for international or the IES, and that is follow their recommended practices.

• 2024-03-14 08:42 Don’t ask me any more questions. That’s a lot of engineering that goes on. Municipalities is they don’t like other people playing in their sandbox, for one, telling them how they should be doing their job, but saying that, why don’t you go by the recognized expertise of people in the field and do what they recommend?

• 2024-03-14 08:43 What’s the purpose of any nonprofit? From my perspective, it’s to no longer be needed. All right.