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

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

 >I'm mostly concerned with not getting mugged.<

Understandable. The idea that more light means more security is not 
necessarily correct, though:

"The City of Light dimmed? It’s true. Thanks to a new law 
<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-04/paris-faces-darkness-as-city-of-light-set-for-illumination-ban.html>, 
not only Paris but all of France <http://topics.bloomberg.com/france/> 
will see its lighting level reduced, beginning this July. Window 
lighting in commercial buildings and the lights on building facades will 
be turned off after 1 a.m., and interior lighting in office buildings 
will be off an hour after the last employee departs.

The new law promises to reduce carbon emissions 
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/carbon-emissions/> and save energy -- the 
annual equivalent of 750,000 households’ worth. Most significant is its 
potential to turn the tide against light pollution 
<http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/light-pollution/klinkenborg-text> 
by changing attitudes about our unnecessary overuse of light at night.

In almost every U.S. city, suburb and town, the streets, parking lots, 
gas stations, and commercial and public buildings are lit through the 
night. Over recent decades, the growth of this pollution has been 
relentless, yet slow enough that most of us haven’t noticed. Parking 
lots and gas stations, for example, are now often 10 times brighter 
<http://www.nature.nps.gov/night/growth.cfm> than they were just 20 
years ago, and light pollution continues to grow at 6 percent every year.

The cost of all this light, monetary and otherwise, is high. The 
connections to sleep disorders, cancer, diabetes and other disease are 
serious enough that the American Medical Association 
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/american-medical-association/> has declared 
<http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/newsblog/162582986.html> 
its support for light-pollution control efforts. Every ecosystem on 
Earth is both nocturnal as well as diurnal, and light destroys habitat 
just as easily as any bulldozer can. And when eight out of 10 children 
born in the U.S. today will never see the Milky Way, we have even lost 
the stars.


    Safety Improves

The usual justification for these costs is that we need all this light 
for safety and security. This simply isn’t true.

No one doubts that artificial light can reduce the risks of being out at 
night, and no one is saying that we ought to exist in the dark. But 
increasingly, police, doctors, astronomers, economists, business 
leaders, communities and now the French government agree 
<http://www.energydigital.com/green_technology/paris-pioneers-light-pollution-reduction> 
that we should reduce the light we use, and that too much brightness at 
night actually reduces our safety and security. Bright lights may make 
us feel safer. Alone, however, they don’t actually make us safer.

The research bears this out. In 2008, PG&E Corp. (PCG) 
<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/PCG:US>, the San Francisco-based energy 
company, reviewed the research and found “either that there is no link 
between lighting and crime, or that any link is too subtle or complex to 
have been evident in the data.”

Others are even more to the point. Australian astronomer Barry Clark 
<http://rahist.nrao.edu/clark_reber-medal.shtml> went so far as to 
conclude that “advocating lighting for crime prevention is like 
advocating use of a flammable liquid to try to put out a fire.”

Our own eyes tell the same story. Too much light at night actually 
blinds us with “disability glare” -- something middle-aged and elderly 
drivers know all too well -- and bright, unshielded lights make it 
impossible to see past them to where criminals might hide. (The next 
time you face a bright streetlight, block it with your hand and notice 
how much better you can see the area beneath and beyond the light.)

Numerous villages, towns and cities in Europe 
<http://topics.bloomberg.com/europe/> and the U.S. have initiated 
programs to shut off streetlights for at least part of the night. 
European cities such as Berlin and Copenhagen already have much lower 
levels of light than their U.S. counterparts, and even some major 
American cities, such as Tucson, Arizona 
<http://www.sao.arizona.edu/FLWO/LIGHT/pollution.html>, have strict 
lighting ordinances that require a level of light that most Americans 
would consider dim. None of these towns and cities has reported related 
increases in crime."


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-24/turn-down-the-city-lights-and-make-streets-safer.html

>
>
> On Friday, September 6, 2013, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
>
>     > Crime and cockroaches like dark in the City. <
>
>     At least you didn't write "criminals and cockroaches" ... I mean,
>     are you really in agreement with zero tolerance urban policy
>     kicking out junkies, sex workers and the homeless?
>
>     No offense intended.
>
>
>
>     On 06.09.2013 04:10, 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.
>
>