The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

[Joseph Tracy]

This seems obvious. But there is a huge energy savings possible in at least bringing the lighting down to where it does the job without blotting out the human connection to the night.  

Also, lit areas make an interesting terrain of light and shadows that a clever criminal can use.  As a kid we used to play hide and seek at night  with outside lights and because of those lights and the contrasts they created I found I could stand in shadows which physically were open to and close to home base  and be completely unseen. No one else wanted to do it because they felt that because they could clearly see the seeker the seeker might see them.  I suspect this principle is known to those criminals who work in the dark. 

On Sep 5, 2013, at 10:10 PM, David Morris wrote:

> Oops  "Send"
> 
> Lights in the City are required for survival.  Crime and cockroaches like dark in the City.
> 
> On Thursday, September 5, 2013, David Morris wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> I live in Vermont about 500 yards from the nearest steetlamp and maybe twice that from the highway that passes through town.  Having lived in many rural places I treasure the unimpeded starlight and the blackness of an overcast evening. The only noise is the small volume of traffic on our road and the creek across the street.   A few of us have helped prevent more lights from going up in town and argued to reduce what we have or get lamps that are efficient and direct the light down.  When one flies the sheer volume of energy being used on excessive light is disturbing even though the patterns are visually entrancing.