The festival of light pollution that we call the holidays is upon us once again, which means its time for me to step up on my soapbox and prepare to duck the rotten eggs, tomatoes and shoes which are sure to be flung my way as I voice my generally unpopular opinion on this matter. Sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe in, especially when its not what most folks want to hear.
First, let me say that I've got nothing against Christmas, nor Hannukah, Kwanza, Festivus, et.al. I admit to a general dislike of organized religion but that's not what's driving me here. I celebrate Christmas and always have, because I appreciate the sentiments and purposes that are involved, and because I've been conditioned to my whole life. It's not easy to break with tradition, nor is it to question the standard practices of tradition. However, like those folks in Appalachia who continue to vote against their better self-interests, traditionalists often choose to do the wrong things for what they consider to be the right reasons.
On to the point of discussion, to borrow a teaser from Slate:
"Sorry, Dude. Your Christmas Lights Are Destroying the Planet."
Of course, even the author of the above linked article considers this to be hyperbole, as evidenced by the beginning of the opening question:
I know Christmas lights waste electricity, but I just won't give them up...
OK, so much for objectivity, but there are some interesting points of information:
Let's be honest here: No matter how hard you try, your decorative light display is never going to be eco-friendly.
First, the basics. Old-school incandescent Christmas lights are, indeed, a big energy waster. Turn on a string of hundreds of high-wattage light bulbs and leave them lit for hundreds of hours, and you're using a pretty significant amount of electricity. All told, Christmas lights consume more than six terawatt-hours per year, or something equivalent to the total electricity consumption of 500,000 homes, according to a report commissioned by the Department of Energy (PDF). To make things worse, incandescent lights burn out pretty quickly, so you're likely to be throwing your lights in the trash every few years.
So, our holiday lighting extravaganza has a cost associated with it. It's as if the country added a half-million single family homes to the energy grid. Half a million, isn't that about the number of votes Gore won the 2000 election by? The point being that it's a lot of people, households, votes, or whatever.
Lest we forget, we're in the midst of a global climate crisis. Once again, the Dutch are leading the way.
The problem is easily stated. In 1950, the global emission of carbon dioxide was 6 billion tons a year. Thanks to population growth, urbanization, the expansion of wealth, and massive industrialization around the world, by 2008 this has increased fivefold to 30 billion tons a year. Assuming that nothing is done to reduce emissions, by 2058, they will be 60 billion tons a year. Thus, to reduce global warming, whose effects are already beginning to be felt, it will be necessary to take drastic measures just to stay at the present level, never mind actually making real progress. For example, to reduce the number of coal-fired generating plants, nuclear capacity in the United States will have to be doubled. To reduce car emissions, either Americans will have to drive half as many miles per year or cars will have to be twice as efficient. Buildings will have to use 25 percent less electricity.
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Another thing strikes me about green urbanism. Even assuming that anything at all gets built in the coming economic depression—during the Great Depression of the 1930s, building construction virtually halted—creating new cities and reconfiguring old ones will take many decades. We don't have that much time. On the other hand, Americans' rapid change in driving habits during the gas-price run-up of summer 2008 suggests that people can quickly alter the ways they behave: driving less, walking more, turning down the thermostat, turning off the lights. Yes, we should eventually change the way we build and plan cities, but it might be more effective in the short run to change the way we live in them.
People can quickly alter the way they behave? For this statement to be true, people first need to become aware of the ways in which they behave, then they need to understand why they behave that way and realize that there are alternative behaviors that may be more beneficial to themselves and their neighbors. Much of human behavior is conditioned and never gets self-analyzed critically. I celebrate the holidays without any extra outdoor lighting and I don't miss it a bit. In fact, I admit to being irritated that my neighbors haven't employed this option as well.
Just as everyone is not entitled to their own opinion, wrong is wrong, neither is everyone entitled to waste the currently limited energy resources available to us all. I hope it never gets to the point where we, as a society, need to examine this vestige of our energy wasting past, but history may not look back kindly on the many ways we've devised to squander our inheritence. "Think Globally, Act Locally" is a proper response to the present crisis and I'm merely suggesting a small local act that could help us all out in the long run, Please turn off the Christmas lights and enjoy the beauty of the night sky.
A picture is worth a thousand words. See the difference in the night sky that the Toronto suburbs got to witness during the blackout of 2003? This is the same night sky that our ancestors slept with and that has been taken away from urban-, suburban-, and exurbanites with the advent of modern lighting conventions.
As an avid amateur astronomer, I have more personal reasons for being concerned about light pollution but I have tried to avoid mentioning them so as not to seem too parochial here. Efficient outdoor lighting would appear to be in everyone's best interest but common sense doesn't always win out, especially over greed and hubris. If more folks would take the time to think about this issue and turn off unnecessary lightining, we'd all be better off.
Please peruse the following links to the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) and their Energy Brochure.