From the BBC:
Half of the UK's population cannot see many stars because the night skies are still "saturated" with light pollution, campaigners have warned. Some 53% of those who joined a recent star count failed to see more than 10 stars in the Orion constellation...
The problem remained despite attempts to curb street lighting, they said. They said that in 2010, local authorities collectively spent more than £500m on street lighting, accounting for 5% to 10% of each council's carbon emissions.
£500m = £8 per person, seems like splendid value to me. Of course, the cost per person of lighting up rural areas is far higher and the cost per person of lighting up urban areas, so if they want to turn off the street lights in rural areas, then great. I can't be bothered to do the workings, but I don't think you get much "carbon emissions" for £8 a year, do you?
UPDATE: Kj in the comments has done the workings. Street lighting causes about 0.4% of total CO2 emissions (to the extent that you worry about them), i.e. 35 kg out of 9 tonnes per person per year.
Emma Marrington, a rural policy campaigner for the CPRE, says: "When we saturate the night sky with unnecessary light, it damages the character of the countryside and blurs the distinction between town and country. But this isn't just about a spectacular view of the stars; light pollution can also disrupt wildlife and affect people's sleeping patterns."
WTF?
According to the ONS, only 19% of people live in rural areas and 81% of us live in urban areas. So if 47% of us can see enough stars, then the chances are that nearly everybody in the countryside can, as well as one-third of people in urban areas; that's the price you pay for better safety at night.
And how does street lighting at night "damage the character of the countryside"? It's a safety thing for pedestrians and motorists. Like I said, they're free to turn the lights off if they want, so all they'd see at night time would be... absolutely nothing, pitch blackness (I quite like the appearance of streetlights threading their way across the hills and valleys, but maybe that's just me). Would do that do enough to unblur "the distinction between town and country" for her?
The wildlife can managed just fine and if she has problem sleeping, then she might try buying thicker curtains, they're good for thermal insulation as well, so win-win.
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23 comments:
It's articles like the ones you quote that make me see stars, when they cause me to go and bang my head against the wall in utter desperation at the idiocy of it all....
Oh, and I do live in the countryside, and I can see lots of stars - if I want to.
Oh, and PS - there ar no street lights in my lane - so can we have our sixteen quid back please?
I live in the country and can see more orange lights on the horizon than I wish and being me I don't see why I should, she has a valid point.
L, yes.
Th, so you're happy for thousands of people in a ten miles radius round you to stumble around in the dark? You could try growing your hedge a little bit higher, it's probably better for all concerned.
"When we saturate the night sky with unnecessary light... ...and affect people's sleeping patterns."
Then buy some curtains?
(Other than that, they need to stop using lighting that allows so much of its output to go up in the air.)
I can't be bothered to do the workings, but I don't think you get much "carbon emissions" for £8 a year, do you?
Say the whole 8£ is spent on electricity, and the average price is 12p per kwh, average CO2 per kwh is 0,527 kg/kwh (Defra), that makes for 35 kg CO2 per person, or some 0,4% of emissions. Pretty insignificant.
PB, that was my first thought.
Kj, thanks, I have updated.
Did n't know there were more than ten stars in Orion: there's the hands and feet (four, funnily enough) the belt (three?) and the dangly bit/ sword, makes ten or so.
DBC, fair point, but presumably they mean "stars that show up in the blacks bits in between" and not the ten or so starts we assume "belong" to Orion proper. It's a rubbish constellation anyway, Cassiopeia is the best.
I would switch off rural lights immediately if I could. To me unwanted light is as intrusive and polluting as unwanted noise. Oddly you will find that if you go somewhere very dark, like rural France or Scotland, there are almost no pitch black nights, there is almost always some moonlight or starlight and once your eyes adapt to it you can see better and further than with street lights dazzling you at close range.
W42, if rural people want rural lights to be switched off, good luck to them. But can the CPRE stop sticking their bloody noses into everybody else's business?
The biggest problem is lamps that shine up into the sky instead of onto the ground. A properly designed lamp will shine 99% of its light downward. Trouble is that a lot of councils spent their money on lights that send a large percentage of their light straight up in a vain attempt to light the clouds, Moon, etc. Hence complaints about inability to see the stars.
I remember walking home through a well-lit town in the late '60s yet still being able to see the Milky Way, presumably because the lamps weren't illuminating the sky. So it is possible to have your cake and eat it too.
Personally, I'd rather have more light on the ground so I can see where I'm going.
Streetlights? Well, we have a few in our village but the next two going North, one is 1.5 miles away the other about 6 miles away both have no streetlights and one streetlight respectively. There are plenty of stars to see. Hardly any light pollution. It's in cities where it is of course the worst.
"But can the CPRE stop sticking their bloody noses into everybody else's business?"
Why on earth would they want to stop, it would make them feel useless, disempowered and unwanted?
Not certain about this, but I suspect that the automatic 30mph speed limit that goes along with street lights may have something to do with it. It may be easier, bureaucratically, f0r a council to put streetlights into a village than have a 30mph limit without them.
All this talk of carbon emissions is bollocks: it's bollocks anyway, but also many years ago I was told that street lighting was being installed everywhere to put up the baseload on the electricity system because nuclear power stations can't be powered down at night when there is less demand.
Personally I'm against streetlights on rural roads - in villages, OK, the odd light makes things easier, so long as the bastards don't put one right outside your bedroom window, but on rural roads they are pointless. That's what your car has headlights for.
@MW
If you counted all the piddly-widdly stars in the spaces in between the real Orion stars AS BEING OF EQUAL SIGNIFICANCE then you would n't be able to descry any constellation at all but just a an undifferentiated Damien Hirst dot picture. I don't think the ancients bothered with the backgound objects.
I suspect that your fondness for Cassiopoeia stems from it presenting a large W. I am more of an Auriga man myself, and possibly Leo which does ,at least look like what it's supposed to be.
I also supect that
Stumble around in the dark...don't they have headlights? and if they are walking then in the time honoured fashion...get off my land.
As another aside, street lighting apparently encourages crime too. You're much less likely to be attacked walking down an unlit street than a lit street. Presumably because criminals are just as scared of the dark as you are.
B, yes, good point about baseload, electricity is much cheaper at night.
DBC, sometimes it's an M, sometimes it's a W. What's not to like?
"and if they are walking then in the time honoured fashion...get off my land."
If they are walking then modern torches are amazingly bright and you can wear it on your head and leave both hands free for fighting off the footpads.
I still think a 10 star Orion and a decent amount of street-lighting is a fair trade-off.Only some kind of completist would insist on more stars per constellation.
Also I gather from the comments that nobody lives,as I do, in one the literally benighted areas where the council has turned off street lights to save money.This is fucking dangerous
and uncivilised.
"Also I gather from the comments that nobody lives, as I do, in one the literally benighted areas where the council has turned off street lights to save money. This is fucking dangerous
and uncivilised"
I live in the country, where there are no street lights. How do you think everyone copes?
@Bay
There's not many people/ houses in the country:there are in towns ,therefore turning off lights is dangerous in towns because there are more people to bump into, to bump into you and mug you.
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