

The Dark Side: Making War on Light Pollution (2007) - mhb
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/20/the-dark-side-2

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serve_yay
What really bugs me is the many _indoor_ lights in our world that are not (or
cannot be) dimmed in the evening/nighttime. Especially at this time of year
when much of the US is dark at 5pm, it gets pretty unbearable being in an
office, or on public transport, at 7pm which is still lit as if it were noon.

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raamdev
What I would love is to see more intelligent lightning systems that use the
current time and location (easy, given most lightning is fixed) to
automatically dim a certain amount depending on the time of day, much like the
F.lux app [1].

1\. [https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)

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codemac
And don't forget redshift[0]! It needs some more open source love :)

[0]: [http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)

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patcon
I'd been doing some thinking several months ago on how to incentivize control
of light pollution at the county or city level. A possible solution might
involve a country using satellite imagery to determine some metric for light
pollution, and giving municipalities tax breaks or funding from a pot for
bringing it down.

EDIT: It could even be an independent organization, using donated commercial
satellite capacity and rewards for the top X localities improving their
ranking.

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therealdrag0
I just read NDT's Death By Black Hole [0] in which he mentions some cities
like New York waste millions of dollars a year on the energy that sends light
skyward. So the incentive is there, it's probably they have failed to be long
term thinking enough to eat the upfront installation costs until the the
reduced overhead pays off 5 years later or w/e.

[0][http://smile.amazon.com/Death-Black-Hole-Cosmic-
Quandaries/d...](http://smile.amazon.com/Death-Black-Hole-Cosmic-
Quandaries/dp/039335038X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417571568&sr=8-1&keywords=death+by+black+hole)

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ptrklly
I work in energy investing and we're seeing a lot of growth in emerging market
solar paired with LEDs that's bringing electricity to formerly off-grid areas.
It's great news generally but bad for light pollution specifically, which is
sad. It'd be great if there were a way to get these companies to sell only
fully shielded lights.

