Friendly reminder that reducing/eliminating outdoor lighting is one of the most impactful changes an individual can take to reduce their ecological/climate footprint.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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New neighbors: Wow being in the country is so scenic and beautiful we can't wait to be done with city life and build a house here
Also new neighbors: Put in asphalt driveway, fences, buildings, all flooded with more exterior lighting than a small stadium
They're good people and they put up with a reasonable amount of our shenanigans but I'm only mildly exaggerating. Our other neighbors told me they don't need to buy night lights for their kids because of all the extra light from that place
Moths when excessive lighting at night:
It's actually a little sadder than that. Most flying insects sense the light above them as the sun (or moon) and orient themselves based on the suns position. Our artificial light tricks them into thinking that the sun is out and they end up orbiting the lights helplessly as their internal gyroscopes are constantly confusing them.
Lil moth rave
Makes me want to take a BB gun to all the streetlights.
You'd need something more than a bb gun. A halberd would prolly do the trick.
A well aimed shot from a pellet rifle will work. I know because I had a neighbor who left hers on and it came right into my bedroom.
Yeah but that wouldn't look as cool.
What about a 22 air rifle at about 800 fps?
wow what kinda gpu you got in that gun?
Sure, but a halberd has more rizz.
Both?
Or a strong laser pointer
one night i dreamed that the lights went out everywhere and i looked up at the sky and it was all psychedelic and shit
I too have had dreams of the northern lights after they came to visit me last year.
When my family complained about lack of street lights at night-time, I said that birds can't sleep. They all thought I was joking, and I kenda went with this story, since they didn't seem to be bothered about wildlife
Like, I kinda get it that turning off the lights at 10:30pm might be annoying and less safe, but realistically.. who the hell drives or even walks at this hours? I mean, people who party do, but that's rare and that's why you have floodlights in cars for, and torches in phones.
At the same time I kinda get it that streetlights would still indeed be safer, and that - in my culture at least - putting animals' welfare near equal to that of humans' is considered weird, if not crazy, so Idk how do I feel about this issue
I just connected car dependancy to excessive light pollution and now I am sad
Yep, you don't normally see flood lights every 100m on a railway like you get on a highway...
wait what your highways have lights? isn't the whole point of cars having headlights that you don't need lights on the roads aside from places like intersections?
Depends on the road, but yeah, some parts don't have lights. I guess you'd call it a freeway in most places where it does.
It's not actually less safe. No study was able to show a link between light and safety.
Interesting. Where do you take your knowledge from?
Just backing up the point, I took a course on light pollution and this was the “common myth” our professor debunked on the first lesson.
I did my PhD on light pollution. I don't have the references on hand but it is well known in the field.
C'mon pal, we know you have at least 3-4 copies of that dissertation lying around.
I mostly worked on the physics side, being a physicist. But I did dug up a reference for you. You can start from there: doi.org/10.3310/phr03110
I don't have a PhD but I do hate light pollution. And while I'm too lazy to look up a source, I can offer an explanation, at least for one effect. Shitty outdoor lighting produces a lot of glare. Meaning if you're on a path that is lit with very bright lights, especially if you can see the bulb directly, your eyes won't adapt to the lower light and anything in shadow becomes invisible. Pools of darkness in brightly lit areas are a terrific place to hide.
Anecdotally, problem people are also afraid of the dark. There's a park near my house that serves as a shortcut between two streets. It has two paths. One is a brightly lit paved walkway next to the baseball diamonds, and the other is an unlit service road. I usually take the unlit path because glare tends to give me headaches. I have seen more sketchy shit happen on the brightly lit path from afar than I have ever seen on the dark path.
Why are the night critters in bed?
I had a thought last night. Some new cars have "matrix" headlights, which will detect oncoming drivers and use an LCD matrix to block out areas that would blind the oncoming driver.
I was looking at the shadow cast on my back door from a streetlight a couple blocks away and thinking it's a very useful light for people walking on the street. Just not for me standing in my backyard or the birds sleeping in my trees.
I wonder if we could start applying this active matrix technology to streetlights. Each time one is set up, we could program it to illuminate all the walkways but not much else. Just an idea.
Streetlights have to be as cheap and maintainance free as possible because there are so many of them and if they break they usually need to be fixed asap. I doubt we're ever gonna see such an intricate concept transferred to streetlights on a grand scale but maybe for fancy urban areas.
Or maybe areas like Hawaii where preventing light pollution is of critical importance? I feel like a lot of mass-produced technologies face their main hurdle at manufacturing and if early adopters fund those initial manufacturing costs, the price can then come down quite a lot. But ultimately, it's mostly wishful thinking, how I would want the world to be, seeing the issues all around us now.
Or spectrum of light other than white? I like to use red light at night inside of our house instead of white because I’ve read it’s more relaxing and helps promote better sleep.
Yeah, that's what they do in Hawaii currently, with amber LEDs that mimic the tone of the old sodium-vapor lamps.
It's definitely an improvement. I would love to see both the matrix and the amber spectrum applied at the same time, that's like peak utopia for me right there.
Doesn't need that complex algorithm here because streetlight is static (the walkways don't change), so all you need is just a different light design for each. Or maybe a modular source you can change while installing.
Honestly a great idea
Don't need an algorithm at all. Just needs what is effectively a lampshade cut to direct the light at the sidewalk and street instead of the houses.