You better believe there's nothing wrong with efficient, responsible lighting for the particular task. That is unless you think wasting energy at an estimated $5 to $10 billion dollars a year is a good idea.

And let's not forget over 40-million tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses added to our atmosphere annually from all of this BAD lighting.

Then there's all of the damage done to the nighttime environment. The hunting, breeding, and hunting habits of all nocturnal mammals, insects, amphibians, and reptiles has been seriously disrupted by all the misdirected and excessive lighting.

And research is showing that light as night(LAN) is causing health problems in humans. The World Health Organization (WHO) just recently stated that too much light at night is a possible carcinogen.

So I guess the question should be, "who can argue FOR bad lighting?"

That's been covered several times RB, but it bears repeating. Efficient lighting with full cut off reflectors requires between 1/2 and 1/3 the bulb size since so little of the light is wasted.

We did a quick study in Ladd Landing which had 250 watt metal halide bulbs installed and found that, with proper reflectors costing roughly $23 each, the bulb size could be cut in half and deliver the same light to the street.

If you want to see what good efficient lighting looks like, I suggest you take a look at Pinnacle Pointe, Steve and Jerry's development. it's funnyt how Steve Kirkham is so against Lighting improvement and yet it is the ONLY type of fixture installed there, except for the Harriman Utility Board fixtures on the streets.

Like I said..it bears repeating. Somehow we need to drill this into the thick skull bones of our officials. Their reactionary attitudes disappoint me.

it's like here's something new (well, not all that new actually) that gives better vision at night, reduces glare, saves money, is safer, has absolutely no downside...But they're against it because...well...It's new!

By the way...I was in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend and they've had lighting improvement on the books for years. It is amazing how easy it was to see at night without all the glare of unshielded lights shining in your eyes all the time.

The amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses produced by bad lighting is (1) overlighting, when too much lighting (wattage & lumens) is used for the task. And (2) by not turning off unnecessary lighting at night, for instance, after a business closes only the lighting that is needed for security purposes should be left on. Other ways to waste energy and add CO2 to the atmosphere is to leave landscape lighting, sign lighting, and architectural lighting on all night long. All of these lights that are left on add up and contribute to the millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions which adds to global warming.

Most of our electricity is produced by burning something. Frankly, I don't count hydropower as green energy for several reasons, but the other exceptions to that would be wind and solar generated electricity, and nuclear power. So let's say 80% of electricity is produced by burning something... coal, natural gas, garbage...well mostly coal around here. Coal is carbon, and ultimately goes into the air as co2 when we burn it.

Hold the amount of CO2 produced that it takes to run a 250 watt bulb in your head for a bit.

So if I have an old light fixture that has a 250 watt bulb in it but a lousy reflector, I only get a certain amount of the lumens (light) that the bulb produces actually landing on whatever it is that I need to illuminate, and the rest of it is wasted, going somewhere it isn't needed, wanted, or, in the case of glare, actually reducing the effectiveness of the light that is landing where we need it.

So let's figure that in that case, about a third of the light produced lands on the street below. In practice it can be far less than that. So we have one third of 250 watts, call it 83 watts producing the lumens that are actually shining where we need them.

If we can replace that fixture with a full cut off fixture with a decent reflector, as much as 80 percent of the light generated goes where we need it. So we only need slightly more than a 100 watt bulb to light up the same area down on the street. We save 150 watts and the CO2 that would be produced burning coal to generate that amount of electricity.

The old fixture did a job for 250 watts worth of CO2...The new fixture only took 100 watts worth of CO2 and was safer because it greatly reduced the amount of glare that reaches the eye of the beholder.

What did I miss?