You can make a difference, in your town or your city, to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event! Reuse this information! This is the letter for week 12 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents to all the strike letters, see this story.
STRIKE FOR THE PLANET
Because, for a change, what needs to be done is so easy it’s ludicrous we haven’t already done it!
Unlike most of what’s needed to save the biosphere, the following problems have cheap, easy-to-do, politically feasible, and oddly pro-capitalist fixes, so there are really no excuses not to take action.
Since all our lives depend on you acting now, begin here – this issue is an easy start.
This week’s topic is LIGHT.
Some clarification of terms first:
- Light includes all electromagnetic radiation – radiowaves, x-rays, infrared, visible light, etc.
- An urban heat island describes an urban environment that is substantially hotter than surrounding rural environments due to human activities.
- And albedo is how much solar radiation is reflected off a planet.
There are two distinct problems with light in San Francisco.
There is too much light at night when it’s bad, aka light pollution.
There isn’t enough light reflected off during the day, aka low albedo.
At night:
Lights in buildings kill birds
Lights drown out the night sky, dangerously reducing environmental connections
Lights significantly confuse nocturnal and migratory species (fish, fowl, insects, reptiles, and more)
Lights cause major health problems
Lights cost money and pump CO2 into the atmosphere
Lights do not improve safety
In the daytime:
Light is absorbed by dark surfaces
This increases the urban heat island effect, and that effect kills
Can you see the solutions here? They’re pretty easy.
For reducing light pollution:
- All interior building lights must be off when people are not inside.
- For commercial buildings or large structures, only exterior lights necessary for aircraft safety can be on at night, and these must be minimal and lowest energy possible (i.e. red lights). There can be exceptions for specific holidays, public art, or events, but these exceptions must be limited to a maximum of 100 hours per year.
- All street lighting must be lowest energy possible, in the 2700 K range (though 2100-2300 K would be much better) with red LEDs in the array, with diffusers, and must be full cut-off light fixtures with downward focus.
- Street lighting must be reduced during late night/early morning hours when traffic is reduced.
- Advertising lighting must be off when a business is closed, and must be dimmed if the business operates during late night/early morning hours.
For increasing our albedo:
- All new, replaced, repaired, or resurfaced pavement and roofs must be made with reflective materials. There can be exceptions for living roofs.
See?! These aren’t hard. And they will have substantial effects. Increasing the city’s albedo will reduce air pollution in SF, lower temperatures in SF, and substantially reduce the amount of CO2 the city produces. Reducing night lighting will also reduce CO2 production, provide substantial health benefits, actually reduce some crimes, and lessen the damage to other species our light pollution is currently causing. And the great thing about these solutions is that most of them cost very little while many of them actually save money!
We can’t afford not to act. And acting on this issue is easy!
Good starting places for more information:
Akbari, Matthews, Seto: “The long-term effect of increasing the albedo of urban areas”: 2012
Akbari, Menon, Rosenfeld: “Global cooling: increasing world-wide urban albedos to offset CO2”: 2009.
Altaweel: “How Light Pollution Affects People and the Environment”: 2017
Crawford: “LED light pollution: Can we save energy and save the night?”: 2015
Chepesiuk: “Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution”: 2009
Dept of Physics, Florida Atlantic University: “Light Pollution Kills Birds in the Environment”: 2010
EMF Safety Network: “The perils of LED streetlights”: 2016
Hecht: “LED Streetlights Are Giving Neighborhoods the Blues”: 2016
Ice911: “It’s Time To Restore Arctic Ice”
International Dark Sky Association: “Lighting, Crime and Safety”
University of Delaware: “How light pollution lures birds into urban areas during fall migration”: 2018