Light Pollution News

March 2025: Follow Where Others Are Going.

• Light Pollution News / Bill McGeeney / Art Hushen / Jeff Schmalz / Spencer SooHoo • Season 3 • Episode 6

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The path to sustainable starry night solutions begin with being a more informed you.

Light Pollution, once thought to be solely detrimental to astronomers, has proven to be an impactful issue across many disciplines of society including ecology, crime, technology, health, and much more!

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Bill McGeeney:

light pollution news march 2025. Follow where others are going. Today we talked lighting and crime. Look at the importance of coalition building. And what would you say about some visually impressive light art? This month on the show? I welcome los angeles dark sky advocate spencer suhu. The founder of dark skies, subreddit Jeff Schmaltz, and the law enforcement veteran and educator, art Hushen A new episode of Life Pollution News.

Bill McGeeney:

I'm your host, bill McGeaney. Each month, I gather on three guests and we go through the news of light pollution. If this is your first time listening, welcome. If this is your first time listening, welcome. We do the show twice a month cover a very wide variety of topics, because light pollution is a very wide impacting issue in our society. You can find out more about light pollution news by heading over to our website at lightpollutionnewscom. Over there, you'll find today's script and transcript for the show. You'll also find all the links we talk about today, not to mention a variety of useful tips and a whole page dedicated to ecology news. While there, you can join our mailing list or become a supporter of the show.

Bill McGeeney:

Hearty thank you to all of our current paid supporters out there. You really make the show possible. As a reminder, our supporters receive opportunities to join the show as a live listener, with a conversation with guests following each show. Supporters also receive a modified monthly email which contain a link to the full news pool that we use to build the show each month, which can be in excess of over 100 articles, but don't worry, they're sorted by topic. If you'd like to help us continue to grow, we still have some sizable deficits we're trying to knock out this year. For only the cost of a cup of coffee that's $3 a month you can really help us cover many of these costs. If you like what we're doing, if you think this adds value in any way, why not say thank you by becoming a supporter? You can learn more over at our website and just click the help us grow link, or you can simply click the support to show link in today's show notes on your apple podcast or spotify podcast player. And, of course, before we begin, definitely hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. That will make this show appear in your podcast feed each and every month. Be sure to find us over on instagram, linkedin tiktok, and we also have a small but growing following on Facebook. We'd love to hear from you If you have any comments you'd like to shoot over about today's show.

Bill McGeeney:

You want to have them right on the air. You can do it two ways. You can text it over by way of the free text link in the show notes, or you can email me, bill at light pollution newscom. Let's get to it. Very glad to have you at home joining me for another Light Pollution News Today. We are finishing out March with a very special slate of guests. With me are a researcher, amateur astronomer, spencer Suhu, founder of Dark Sky Reddit page, mr Jeff Schmaltz, and the crime prevention and law enforcement veteran founder of the educational organization National Institute of Crime Prevention, art Hushin. Art, you start down the path to collegiate education as an adjunct professor now of University of South Florida, but you've been doing this stuff your whole career. What was the drive about environmental design that piqued your curiosity?

Art Hushen:

All right. So I got to go back on this one. So and tell everybody about 1992, I was taking a class in Tampa, florida junior college and my background in law enforcement, community policing, set under Lee Brown at the time with the storefront program in Houston, the CPOP, and just pretty active in it, and I sat in class that's what we talk about, education. And they talked about this where we talk about education, and they talked about this thing called crime prevention through environmental design and I thought what are they going to teach me about this? So I took it mainly to get away from work for a couple of days and so that's why I was there, had no intention of being sold on this initiative.

Art Hushen:

After the first two or three hours this light bulb in my head went off and said wow, people respond to the physical environment and lighting was one of those as well. So why not use that as a strategy to try to deter certain types of antisocial behavior, criminal activity? And then it worked so well that we began to start codifying it. You know, from building setback to window placement to landscaping, elements that went into that and we thought that that is the best way to do it and we see a drop in calls for police service, we see a huge increase in positive social interaction, and it all comes to just good design, and I was so sold on it.

Art Hushen:

It just became my passion and we created the first septic unit in the country where we work like fire does, but with city planners, to ensure these minimum design standards are met, to encourage positive behavior between people. And the best deterrent to crime is people taking ownership of a space and taking responsibility for it. This is a term now we use, called community self-policing, where the community police itself. We give them the tools to do that, based off the design and how they interact with it. So what does that?

Bill McGeeney:

mean Many. Many folks at home probably don't know enough about criminology and policing. So what does that look like? What is?

Art Hushen:

why don't you explain some of what it looks like is, for example, we want people to go outside and walk. You know didn't take advantage of that. But when we give them two foot sidewalks and we force them to walk on the street, they're not going to walk on the street, they'd rather stay home. So now we give them six-foot sidewalks so they can push a stroller and engage with their kids. We give them pocket parks in neighborhoods where they never had green space to go to, so now they can come together as a community, interact and get to know each other. Let's have a potluck dinner. Let's do this. Let's have a star night. We'll look at the stars. We all go outside and get together, and that's the best form of community, and safety is when people come together.

Art Hushen:

You don't need the police like you used to. People take ownership. We add windows to look out, to see what's happening. We look at workstation orientation, how we design your desk to where you face the window. We look at outdoor seating and placement. We even go as far in a park design where, if I have my kids on a swing and I'm pushing them, when you're pushing your kids on the swing, I want you to look at where the public restrooms are. I want you to look at where the parking lot is. I want you to look at the basketball court.

Art Hushen:

So now we're bringing surveillance. So if someone needs help, we can respond to that. If I see my friends, I can wave hey, we can respond to that. If I see my friends, I can wave hey, we're over here in the park, come and see us and be with us. So that is what we look at, because the old days where people just stayed kind of urban fortress model people locked themselves up inside and want to go out, it didn't do much for our communities. But now, if we design and set that as a standard, then people take responsibility and you start to see fewer and fewer crimes. You don't eliminate it, but when I see crime reduction 60, 70% using these strategies, when I don't need to hire more police, that's the most effective strategy we can have.

Bill McGeeney:

It has social media at all or any, because I know we have these apps like Neighborhood and these apps which you're always seeing people commit crimes.

Jeff Schmalz:

Yeah.

Bill McGeeney:

Has that done anything to speed up this environmental design process?

Art Hushen:

I guess, yeah, social media has quite a bit. It's something as simple as the ring doorbell, you know, now it engages you. Your phone's activated. You look at it. What's that person doing? I'm going to get on the network, let my neighbors know. Hey, there's someone at my door. You know they're walking down the street. Well, fred and Mary said that it was at their door too. So now it's like neighborhood watchful with technology. So now we bring the neighborhood together. We've got someone in the neighborhood. People ask the question can I help you? And that's what it is. That's what being a community is. Can I help you? Do you need anything? Well, I'm lost. I'm looking for Fred's house. Oh, okay, yeah, fred lives down the street. He lives in that house. So it just brings everybody together and social media helps a lot. It goes both ways. It helps a lot. Sometimes it's a bit of a problem, but most of the time it can really help.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, I know, here we have a neighborhood community or we have, you know, obviously, our Facebook page, but we also have a community group. Or we have, you know, obviously, our Facebook page, but we also have a community group. It's interesting, you know you get to see a lot, but you know, so we'll get to some of the crime stuff in a second. I want to kick off this show. This is a warm-up article if I've ever come across one, and you know astrotourism has actually made it when it hits Dear Abby.

Bill McGeeney:

The title of the Dear Abby is Host Pulls plug on adults only night sky event when brother-in-law adds three preteens to the mix. Starry-eyed in the West, the author and 25-year amateur astronomer got themselves into a pickle when they protested their brother-in-law's inclusion of three granddaughters to their annual dark sky getaway. I'm not sure why they need to reach out to syndicated columnist Abigail Van Buren, who runs the well-known Dear Abby column. However, abby agreed, with Starry Eyes' frustration, that the girls were sprung on them at the last minute and thought that maybe they should have had more conversations beforehand. This is an interesting one, jeff. Do you have any good stories about some fun ones that have been coming through? I know you see a lot that comes through on your Reddit.

Jeff Schmalz:

No, honestly no, that one stands alone and this seems more about children's ages really than anything else. And you guys, we're all going to start parties. I assume everyone's been to the start party and they know some kids just get bored and then they get tired and it's terrible oh, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Bill McGeeney:

I mean you know that's a kid, right, you know that's just being a kid, but I mean a 25 year amateur astronomy and someone who does an annual dark sky getaway. I don't think I would have thought I'd ever read that in a deer Abbey in my life, and here it is right here, bill.

Art Hushen:

I downloaded that and if you read the headlines on it, dear host pulls a plug in adults only Nice guy man, bill. As you read it you're like, oh my gosh, what are they doing? A dark sky. So this is bad, because they only read the headline. They will not read the entire article. So they hear it's like, oh my gosh, we can't do that anymore, save the kids. And that's where the media just kind of you got to read the whole thing.

Spencer SooHoo:

I just find it incredible that the host would pull the plug on the party Because you know, as an amateur astronomer does star parties. We love having kids there, even, you know, even the young ones. I mean, I've got the co-worker who has a five-year-old daughter and she was just so engrossed by looking at the moon that you couldn't pull her away from the telescope.

Bill McGeeney:

so it's just yeah, just incredible that somebody would say, no, I'm canceling the party yeah, I thought that was kind of strange too, because it's always more of a it's, you know, it's like kind of like bird watching or like you know ecotourism aspect to it. Right, you're not serving alcohol or there's nothing adult only about it. To your point, art.

Art Hushen:

Yeah, it's not.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah.

Spencer SooHoo:

You know, as an aside, there is a we have one of our club members who actually does star parties specifically for kids with learning disorders and ADD, hyper ADD, and so he makes sure that you have a scope that can't really be destroyed and then invites them out there for that, and so that's another. You know that's off topic, but you know that's something I think is great.

Bill McGeeney:

Oh, that's great. Yeah, I used to do star parties here. The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia used to have public funding from NASA to help them do city skies throughout the whole city. So for you know, underprivileged kids are able to actually be able to do that and I some of my fondest moments were being in parts of North Philly that I think you would never think to look up, and you know these kids are so appreciative and they loved every second. I was only able to show them Capella and maybe one other thing because that's a window of sky I had access to, but you know they were super appreciative and it was great.

Bill McGeeney:

Well, why don't we kick today's show off with some crime stories? It's not often I'm actually able to cover these art, mainly because I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to crime stories, and you do. So let's jump into it. Per CBS News, denver police fight crime with new parking lot lighting rules. According to police, denver has always required proper parking lot lighting. Despite this, the city has released a new best practices to reduce auto thefts, break-ins and crime Because, as Kayla Nobbs, the resource officer at Denver's police department, says, lighting is the number one way to reduce crime, even though there's prior lighting in the code. That didn't do that, bart, so why don't you explain to me what's going on here and why it is the number one way to reduce crime.

Art Hushen:

Okay, we do a lot of training in Denver. We're under Colorado Post, so we were just up training in Fort Collins not too long ago and Boulder we're doing training there. One thing that we emphasize under lighting is that good lighting is the number one deterrent to crime, and so we emphasize that a lot and you've got to take an approach to where you place the light, the standards for that. It can't be the best deterrent for crime if we already have the infrastructure there to do it or to use it. We've got everything there. We tweak the lighting out Again, we treat canopy, so it can be that tool and it can be a deterrent to crime if it's done the way it should be done.

Art Hushen:

I kind of like her statement. I read that too, and I know a lot of the officers there were probably kind of like OK, well, this is our public spokesperson. This isn't the one that's in the field doing this every day and that's come up quite a bit too. But it's a great tool to use because it's readily available to us. You know, we can work on it very quickly. People see it and every city wants to say they're taking strides to come up with a solution, and for a lot of cities. It's just add more lighting. Is that solution? And Denver is no different than what I see in Seattle and some of the other cities as well that emphasize this New York as well but it's just how it's used. You know, it's like any tool. If you don't know how to use it, what are you going to hurt as part of it when you try to use that tool and that becomes a concern.

Bill McGeeney:

That lighting? When you say good lighting, what are we specifically talking about there?

Art Hushen:

Good lighting. We get into a distribution pattern, we get into uniformity level, we get into full counter locks, we get into color rendering, we get into Kelvin temperature. Again, those are all things you have to consider and when it's done well and we kind of thought, if it's done well, it's a really effective tool to use along with the social programs. So again, then we get into sidewalk width and we get in how we activate the space for positive social interaction and that lighting could encourage people to come out and use that parking lot where they might not have used it before. They feel comfortable now parking there where before they left it and put their car somewhere else. So it's just that balance again, as we look at that. But you got to work closely with government to make sure they understand. You know what type of lighting is not all lighting Cause we talked about led before. Not all led lighting is good. But many of the public don't know that and a lot of city officials don't know that either.

Bill McGeeney:

So I guess I'm curious about how light affects some crime, because I know here, you know, smash and grabs they happen usually daytime, all the time in like park areas, right, like usually you park your car, someone comes along, smashes, takes whatever's in there and then moves on. I see that all the time. What is reduced in lighting?

Art Hushen:

What is reduced is lack of what we call positive activity. So if I don't have good lighting, I'm not going to have a lot of good, positive or social interaction, because people I don't want to say follow the light. You know they follow where other people are going. So if I have more people along the walkway or corridor, more people in a green space, I'll have more and more people using that space, and that makes it harder for the offender to be successful. In many cases they don't want to be observed. They don't want people to pay attention to them. They want to transition through with no one really looking at them, and sometimes darkness might allow that. Lack of social interaction might allow that as well. It's just blending all of those components together and knowing who to go to A study that came out from John Jay College not too long ago.

Art Hushen:

We talk about bringing in a variety of groups of social services. We have found, or they found, that for every additional five to ten nonprofits the city includes as part of their renovation or renewal, there's up to as much as a 10 percent reduction in the homicide rate. We didn't hire more police for that. We reached out to more services. We reached out to nonprofits to help us, and a lot of cities don't see the value of that. So again, when you have more services available, we see less criminal activity. But it's just getting the government to say we need to do this instead of flooding it like we saw in other cities. But light to deter crime? There's a kinder way, a more humane way to do it. It's just not blasting with light.

Bill McGeeney:

What I was curious about because I mean I see plenty of crimes during the day. I've been victim of crime in a very busy area during the day and I'm personally not sold that light prevents crime because if it doesn't do it in daytime, why would it do it in nighttime?

Art Hushen:

By itself. What was the other topic that came up not too long ago when we started getting into this camera push, cctv? We bring in these cameras. It's going to deter crime. That was a big point for selling cameras, did it? It didn't. How you use the cameras. What strategy you have to support that. What's your scheme with that? It's the same with lighting. How do you use the lighting? What's your scheme? What's your goal? How are you going to accomplish that? And I try to compare those two so people see we've had this belief before. Or if I do this one thing, I've had principals in schools tell me if I get cameras in, I can drop a lot of my fights in the hallway, I can eliminate these things that are occurring. And we're like no, no, no, it's not going to happen. You're going to capture it, but it's not going to get rid of itself. Again, how do you support your camera program? How do you support your lighting initiative? Those are all important.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, and case in point we have a view into a park here and there's one guy who goes through a 5 am and we know it's him because he has a headlamp and there's no light in the park and he puts graffiti on some of the poles. We'll go in and like paint over it and the next day we'll see him in the morning with this headlamp out there doing it again, and so nothing is changing right. So you add an article to this list. Months of articles. The pool from the Atlantic. I saw it come through. I don't know if I spoke about it on the show. Turn down the lights from Eric Skigliano over at the Atlantic. Why don't you talk about this one?

Art Hushen:

Yeah, and again, we've done a lot of training in Seattle there for the corporation the city saddle police part. What I liked was that the author bought a personal story into that and that's why I was attracted to the story. He said, hey, I heard what you're doing in Seattle, you know. Here's my story. I want to run this. What do you think?

Art Hushen:

I thought it was a great idea and I like it because I know some of the neighborhoods. We've been there and we talk about how certain parts of the city have no life and no crime. Well, again, we have to look at the social component. We look at homeownership, we look at jobs. We look at home ownership, we look at jobs, we look at activities there. So I'm not going to have a lot of crime in those neighborhoods. So, again, they don't have a lot of lighting. I don't want to get into gentrification, those other things, but at least we start to see that.

Art Hushen:

Also, kind of going into this is that we don't need more light, we just need better light. We need more quality light, lighting where you need it. And I liked that that he was able to respond to that and go. I liked that that he was able to respond to that and go. I agree, you know we just need to light where we have crime, where we have this type of behavior, but then to have the flexibility within the infrastructure to do that, you know, maybe dimming the lights by 50% or 75%, maybe looking at new technology to address that as well. If I have a lot of crime where I've got someone painting the poles you know again with graffiti, where are the police? You know that's what infuriates me. Where's the police? Why aren't they involved with that?

Art Hushen:

I'm going to keep my mouth shut on that one you believe I'm going to agree with you, because I got my car broken into Sacramento and I did everything I was supposed to do, everything. I parked my car in front of the outdoor seating. You know I had a projector in the back. Right on a busy street People were looking at my car. Go, that's perfect, that's, I've done everything I'm supposed to do.

Art Hushen:

They still smash the window because on the license plate it showed it was a permit for a, for example, a vehicle used for a rental car. So they knew I'm not going to come back and testify. They knew that if they break into the car. So they only targeted cars with that plate, even though I parked in the space I was supposed to to be safe. So what message do we send? And that's part of government change of the plates. Florida did the same thing. A lot of people were being carjacked. They changed the plates back to regular plates and we saw that drop. We saw a decrease in that type of crime. So again, those little things we don't think about makes a huge difference.

Bill McGeeney:

Well, here in my neck of the woods I have these two items. I'll be honest, you're going to sway me, but I'll be honest. It's very hard not to be cynical about the latter piece, but we'll talk about it in a sec. Philadelphia has witnessed a historic drop in homicides Since its all-time high in 2021 at 562,. 2024's numbers have come down to 268, one at 562. 2024's numbers have come down to 268, 142 fewer victims. To understand the gravity of those numbers, we have to go back to 2013 to 2014, where we saw lower homicide counts. Shootings fell from an all-time high through 2022 at 2,331 to roughly half of that at 1,081 last year Again, numbers on par with around 2014. So it's been a while since we've seen those numbers.

Bill McGeeney:

At the same time, the city of Philadelphia has rolled out new LED streetlights. The Crime Justice Lab team over at the University of Pennsylvania, led by Aaron Chalfin, looks to deliver their initial assessment later this year. Chalfin's most notable work, I think, has been at Chicago Crime Lob's New York Omni Presence Study, which you have cited in the last show reducing crime through environmental design, with 36% point crime reduction and a 4% overall reduction in violent crimes. The street lighting conversation here in Philly was rolled out with the explicit goal of public safety and the assumption that brighter lights would cut down gun violence. So, before we continue, it wasn't enough that the lights were already in place, it wasn't enough that street brightness had increased continually since 1900, but the assumption was that they had to be even brighter to cut down on gun violence.

Bill McGeeney:

The study that the University of Pennsylvania is doing is a joint effort with the Urban Affairs Coalition and is, at the very least, looking to connect lighting to feelings of safety and social cohesion, for which art and you've mentioned before and this stuff is longstanding, sufficient documentation correlating lighting to feelings of safety and helping to provide social cohesion. The bigger question, I think, is whether lighting reduces gun violence and, given the data from the Philadelphia Enquirer article that I pull a lot of information from here, I'm going to speculate that they'll draw an inverse correlation between streetlight upgrades and specifically, daylighting of select neighborhoods and gun violence. And the Enquirer cites that in 2024, gun violence, including robberies, was down more than a third and arrests and violent crimes were up. I get what Chauvin's trying to prove and I get the allure of low-cost impact solution. How do you attribute that to streetlights?

Art Hushen:

I like the article too, to put it solely on streetlights. They talked about some grassroots initiatives that was going on at the time as well. Maybe some neighborhoods were stronger than that, some weren't, some were more receptive. They talked about a lot of the offenders actually shooting each other. So no more competition in the gang war, which again, people died as a result of that, which, regardless, you hate to see that. It's just really frustrating because they don't consider the community makeup, the role they play, parents that were involved with this, that participated.

Art Hushen:

The selling point, it's easy to explain, is we have brighter lights. That's where crime stopped. No, because there's so many grassroots programs that the public's unaware of and it was even mentioned in the article a variety of grassroots projects. They didn't really build off of those. Lighting again, did they tie that in with soundtrack technology for gunshot track? So again, which really helps, you know the police coming there with gunshot trackers. The lights are there, they can see more of that. And then you tie in philadelphia street camera system that ties into law enforcement. Did that help them to identify more offenders? Well, they didn't go into that either. So there's just so many things that we missed.

Art Hushen:

But just to come back, say, lighting by and there is no silver bullet. You know we all want that, but I want to really get into the details of it. You know the demographics again, housing, again, employment opportunities, that we have an influx of more social programs to engage the community. There's so many nonprofits that have a huge impact on neighborhoods Now while they're putting up the lights nonprofits working there and they've already established themselves in the community as some of the leaders going into that and let's give the credits to the lights. No, what about the people knocking on doors every day to help? No, and they don't get that credit. So again, it's just this going back and forth with what the cities want to promote as a success story to what actually the people in the street every day are doing to get that done. So that's the issue sometimes that we have.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head A lot of components here In 2013, 2014,. I was in the city and I would say we had a great mayor, mayor Nutter, at the time, and they did a lot of community coordination and work with community and really reduced crime and it was an impressive feat of what they did and they didn't change the lights at all between 2005 to 2015. It wasn't a. You know, we're not switching over, adding new lights and trying to daylight neighborhoods. When they did that, they did it through community organization Hard work, it's hard work.

Art Hushen:

To fix it it's really hard work. I'll give an example of Buffalo. It's another great city. We've done the trading with Buffalo in the past and their gun violence initiative under the SEPTEP program. They had reduction of 46%. They didn't improve the lighting, they just applied the SEPTEP components and strategies grassroots approach, working with community members how to do that and have that large of a drop in crime, gun violence, and no one addressed the street lighting. So you see one city saying hard work Again in two major cities Philadelphia and Buffalo. So again, how do we describe that in such a way that other political leaders can see that and go? I'm going to copy Buffalo, Because what they did was amazing In Philadelphia. Yeah, they decreased as well across the board, but I think a realistic approach, that grassroots to working within the community and, like I say, it's hard work, it's hard work.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, there's also a reverberating consequences of trying to praise the streetlights for everything. A part of that is a lot of private businesses you'll see will set up super bright stadium lighting in their parking lots and they'll just throw up I mean really close, very ultra bright, to the point that it probably causes eye damage. Honestly, if you go there day in and day out, what it does is it reinstills this myth I feel like so often light is. I don't know if it's talked about as the boogeyman and if we just turn on light, all everything will disappear. Our public officials you know, here in the city, our public officials will speak about light like that. Is that it? Should I be lighting underneath my bed? Is that what I should be doing?

Art Hushen:

And the fear. Again. I'm not getting too far off track, but I did a Dark Sky webinar last year and they started asking well, when does crime occur and why are people afraid? And when you start looking at the numbers, you see about a 62% 64% increase in violent crime home invasion, homicide during the evening hours, during darkness, and that's the fear. That's the fear that takes over. Now they're not looking at the neighborhood where this is happening or lots of calls for service, they're just running those general numbers out and people that don't have crime, what happens? Perception Wow, that's going to happen here.

Art Hushen:

I need to light up my street and light up my house, but the data shows something different and I try to tell the dark sky advocates. That's why so many people are motivated because violent crime, property crime, we can fix it. That's no big deal. You know we've got insurance. I'll repaint my mailbox. You, that's no big deal. You know we got insurance. I'll repaint my mailbox. You know I'll buy my kid a new bike, you know. But you see, when they come in through that front door or you see someone shot in a neighborhood park, that's where that fear takes over.

Bill McGeeney:

Art. I can't help but think about something I recently saw. It's actually in a news piece that I saw the other day where they're trying to track down someone who ran out and shot someone around it's probably sometime in the night A very well lit, very bright street Went over and shot someone in the car, and I find that a lot of these stories that come across that have similar sad storylines like this. What the people do is they just put a mask on and that seems it's a $5 solution to what light is supposed to prevent, isn't it?

Art Hushen:

Yeah, you can have state-of-the-art technology, but again, if they conceal themselves, again the public thinks we have facial recognition on every camera the police department owns? No, they don't. We have the ability to search a database through Interpol, pull records out right away and identify an offender through an earlobe identification. We don't have that.

Bill McGeeney:

Enhance.

Art Hushen:

So, and again, there's ways to get around it too. Nothing beats just having just people taking ownership. And we can't stop all crime, you know, and we all can agree on it. We just we know we can't stop at all, but we can make it harder for that offender to be successful at all, but we can make it harder for that offender to be successful.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah Well, hopefully you know it's, as you said, more holistic and less scapegoating and trying to tie your political aspirations to you know, a magical device.

Art Hushen:

Oh, that's a very good way to put it. That's a holistic approach. That's a good way to put it.

Bill McGeeney:

I'm going to finish out the crime piece here with two things. First, I'll note the University of Pennsylvania Crime Labs study has the following list on its website, and this again it just feels very much like they are trying to prop up lighting here and not looking for an objective solution, whereby New York study Crime Labs team wrote has long been thought that the street lighting could impact crime. Long been thought that the street lighting could impact crime and yet little rigorous evidence existed to support this contention. The New York one will add to our knowledge connecting street lighting to violence reduction and has implications for other cities that are looking for place-based investments that can help curb the epidemic levels of gun violence. I'll just leave that there.

Bill McGeeney:

Let's close our conversation on lighting and crime by mentioning this study. This is interesting. I like this. One Journal of Virtual Reality found that a decrease in natural luminance leads to an increased fear of crime, especially shortly after sunset. Okay, not odd, but the piece that was really interesting was that it found that interior lighting played a role in comforting people in a night. So interior lighting if you're walking down the street and a house had its, say, living room light or something like that, it played a role in comforting people as they walked down the street.

Art Hushen:

Yeah, I can see that because they think someone's at home if they call for help. They see an office space looks active. They feel there's someone inside that can respond to help them if they call for help. So it's just that if I go down a dark street let's say a commercial property or a business district and not any light is on, you throw in some recessed hallways into the building and I'm walking on that sidewalk, I am going into every nook and cranny of someone behind that corner or someone in that hallway. When I have lighting on the inside of that, then it eliminates that and I feel more comfortable walking down the street.

Art Hushen:

And that's from us conducting user interviews with people that live in the neighborhoods. They're like, yeah, I kind of like it when this is on, because people sleep in here at night in this hallway. Now they put that light on, nobody sleeps there anymore and the person's just sleeping, not doing anything wrong. I've been sleeping there, but that fear perception starts to take over well, I'm gonna wake the other two guys up now okay, they've been uh, enjoying your little.

Spencer SooHoo:

No more crime. Here we go. Are you turning on the lights now?

Bill McGeeney:

oh, oh. Man, jeff, you might get banned, all right. I've stumbled across many, many news stories regarding astro-tourism in India, and this is the first one that's really ripe. We've got another ripe topic, I think, to discuss as astro-tourism increases. The Indian Institute of Astrophysics will train librarians and supervisors in rural India to learn all about the sky, including what to see, why they're seeing it and how to convey that to people of all ages. The article comes from the New India Express goes on to mention this infatuation with experiencing a natural night. As people make two to three days long trips to rural communities to see this, the goal is to help those communities maximize the opportunity to help people explore night sky. And, in a separate piece from Skift, an astrotourism guide company named Starscapes partnered with local development board and reportedly saw over 600 people in attendance over a four-part astrotourism event series. Jeff, have you seen like an increase in Indian-related stuff on your Reddit?

Jeff Schmalz:

Not necessarily India, but I have seen an increase in AstroTourist demands. I know India has just sort of launched their first dark sky reserve just a couple of years ago and they're certainly looking to expand those horizons. What I noticed a lot is rural communities looking for a new revenue stream and they tend to generate towards something simple like skies, because they can bring in the money. The challenge becomes when someone else comes in that might challenge those dark skies with money, and whether they hold up the desire to share dark skies or whether they'll give over to the industry of light pollution.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, well, since you mentioned it, in a world of culture and policy, which is where we're starting now in this part of the show, there's a big win, for nature program showcased two site retrofittings and a dark sky certified third location to obtain what co-founder Franklin Mountain Energy, audrey Robertson, called a win-win solution for balancing safety while protecting the night sky.

Bill McGeeney:

The success of the program derived from a coalition of stakeholders in the Dark for the Park Alliance, which included a very lengthy list of Carlsberg Caverns National Park, chaco Culture, national Heritage Park, new Mexico Oil and Gas Association, the Bureau of Land Management, new Mexico State Land Office, mcdonald Observatory, apache Point Observatory, dark Sky International and Dark Sky New Mexico. This simple win helps Franklin Mount Energy divert attention away from apparently continued clean air standards violations, according to one source, and I don't think they'll have to worry much more about those in the coming years, but maybe that's a story for a different day. Spencer, you have to work with coalitions in Los Angeles, right yeah? How does that work? Why don't you tell us a little bit about how it is building those coalitions? I think this is a lot of dark sky groups and advocates, I think, have the most difficulty at this point. I mean building coalitions.

Spencer SooHoo:

It's difficult. I mean, the only lasting coalition we've built is with Dark Sky International. We tried partnering with Climate Reality and then they had their own hot buttons that they're working on. They're more concerned about microplastics and the environment than they are dark skies, so that collaboration sort of fell by the wayside after the six months of meetings with them. We also worked with the Center for Biological Diversity. We worked with them early on. We got a petition going for biological diversity. We worked with them early on. We got a petition going. They're really interested in dark skies from an environmental viewpoint, in terms of energy conservation, things like that. But they had their own focus and so that alliance didn't last too long. I mean, we're still sending them updates and things like that.

Spencer SooHoo:

And then Travis Longcore, who's with the Audubon Society. He's a UCLA professor who's done a lot of work on the impact of light pollution on birds. So we've actually worked with him early on when we were talking, having discussions with LA County, but then he's got his own focus and the Audubon Society has their own focus. So basically it's been very hard to build a coalition other than with Dark Sky International. But then I think you think, yeah, it's, it's not for lack of trying no, yeah, does audubon do lights out in la?

Spencer SooHoo:

there is a lights out in la. Yeah, I don't. I don't know if it's sponsored specifically by the audubon society or not.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, here Alban is the one who, I think, initially backed the play. It's a coalition group of many stakeholders that try and do it. It's a very again to your point, it's a very laborious exercise where they have to go out and contact these building and harass building managers, essentially to have them turn off the lights and buy into the essentially the program lights and buy into the essentially the program.

Spencer SooHoo:

Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that our state of LA County is trying to do is to promote awareness is that they're actually trying to get light pollution meters or, you know, sqm meters, light quality sky quality meters in the hands of people and do sort of like a citizen science thing where they'll set up a website and people can report their quality of the sky. One of the things that's been bothering me is that so we'll work with the county, we'll get legislation changed and things like that.

Bill McGeeney:

But how do we quantify when out there's been an impact?

Spencer SooHoo:

Yeah, that data is very important. There's no good data on that. You know you can use remote sensing observations, but then there are some limitations there, and so once somebody suggested flying drones over some areas or airplanes. That gets expensive and that's not practical, so there's got to be another way of quantifying the impact that you're having.

Bill McGeeney:

I wholly agree. That is a very hard part to do it. I want to move us forward here a little bit, because we just spoke about building the coalition. Right On the other side of the world, down in Chile, it's a totally different tale that's emerging. Unlike New Mexico, the US company AES is planning to build a hydrogen and ammonia plant on 3,000 hectares of Atacama Desert. The plants would be processing an estimated 730,000 tons of ammonia per year and the plans involve construction of a solar and wind array involved in the plant operations. And then the groundbreaking is slated to begin in 2027, with a completion date of 2032.

Bill McGeeney:

The concern from the European Southern Observatory is that the end result of this construction will have a permanent impact on research. The plant facility sits just five kilometers from the Very Large Telescope, which could mean serious impediments for these super-sensitive instruments. If you're, at home, not aware of the Very Large Telescope, it's a four-telescope array of 8.2-meter mirrors sitting at Cerro Paranal, chile. Per the ESO director, Javier Barcon, in science, even if the AES does a perfect job, using perfect lights that probably don't even exist yet, with perfect shielding, there will be an impact that will be significant. And added to that frustration, for perhaps all parties is that Chilean representatives have found themselves beginning to take, as Jeff you're saying, a pro-energy or pro-science stance. Chile has aggressively pursued renewable energy, including a 2023 green hydrogen action plan that enables the country to export hydrogen. So even the big guys have problems with when a new kid moves in with a bigger setup.

Jeff Schmalz:

You know, I read several stories on this topic and I find it fascinating. One of the more interesting parts of it, I think, is the first story I read about it called it an energy megaproject. And then later on I've seen other stories that are more pro the building of this factory and they call it a renewable energy project. And so it's a use of language to sort of justify, and it splits us, as you said, between pro-energy and pro-science.

Bill McGeeney:

We're running out of space.

Jeff Schmalz:

It's not a new story. Right of hundred years ago you know the royal observatory in london. It wouldn't record anything anymore because it got too bright. And you know cities all around the world have all the old observatories that they couldn't use anymore. They had to move them out into more dark areas, and now those dark areas are now getting industrialized as well and we're running out of space, like you said, said.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, maybe, I guess, the floating barges find a way to get it out there.

Spencer SooHoo:

There is a petition that's being circulated for people who want to protest that.

Bill McGeeney:

Yeah, why don't you send it over and I'll include it in the show notes and so listeners can grab it? That's going to be a story to look out for in 2025, without a doubt. Before we depart from the theme of coalition building, though, I have this article from down in the heart of Texas. As friend of the show, betty Buckley likes to say coalition is the name of the game.

Bill McGeeney:

Down in the Hill Country, the Hill Country Alliance awarded their Night Sky Preservation Fund to a number of organizations. The fund is dedicated to supporting goals of providing a healthy nighttime ecosystem for all. The fund is backed by grants from Chicago-based COIPA Foundation, a nonprofit trust that generates income largely off of investments. This year's recipients included nine awardees, including the Blanco County Friends of Night Sky, the Comar County Friends of Night Sky, county Friends of Night Sky, the Comar County Friends of Night Sky, dillespie County, jones County.

Bill McGeeney:

Night Sky Advocacy Keep it Real Beautiful and Keep it Real. Friends of Night Sky, the Northwest Historical Homeowners Association, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The fund is used for night sky quality monitoring to your point, spencer and fixture upgrades for dark sky compliance. I think this is probably the piece, is the hardest piece of the puzzle right spence at the end of the day, you know, to get anyone into compliance or to even to buy into, you know, having a healthy night. It's cost, prohibitive, right, at least initially. One of the ways solve it. You have to find a way to get the cash to those individuals.

Spencer SooHoo:

It doesn't have to be cost-per-view. I mean, you know, you know, to quote Travis Longcore you know light pollution is the simplest thing to control. Just turn off the switch. Yeah, but we can talk to art about that too.

Art Hushen:

No, don't pull me into this, don no, don't pull me into this. Don't pull me into this.

Bill McGeeney:

No, yeah. Well, you know, lack of proper incentives is a difficult piece.

Spencer SooHoo:

That's why one of the things that we've been advocating, you know, is you don't have to go out and buy a new light fixture right now, but when the thing breaks, then you're going to incur a cost. So if a light bulb goes out, it's not going to cost you anymore to get a lower color tempter light bulb goes out. It's not going to cost you anymore to get a lower color temperature light bulb.

Bill McGeeney:

So there are a lot of simple things that one can do to make the sky a little more friendlier, right, or. But if you get too low temperature, you're not going to be able to incinerate the criminal as they come through your land, or maybe just a deer, I don't know. So we're not too far from the end of the show, but before we get there, I want to give everyone a chance to plug themselves and Spence. How can people learn more about your activities in Los Angeles? How can they learn more about what you guys are doing if they're interested in joining? Or how can they learn more about what's going on out there?

Spencer SooHoo:

Okay, well, we have a video that LA County produced. It's a 10 or 15 minute video which does a very good job of highlighting the problem of light pollution in Los Angeles County, and it interviews all the various stakeholders you know, from amateur astronomers to Native Americans, environmentalists and so on. So I think. But that video is actually linked on our website, wwwlaasorg, so it's right at the beginning of the website and you can join the LAAS or you can join Dark Sky International's Los Angeles chapter, and I think those are two good starting points.

Bill McGeeney:

And Spencer, you guys have the added challenge that Los Angeles has really unique streetlights. You guys have historically artistic streetlights.

Spencer SooHoo:

That's a bone of contention with Griffith Park Observatory. There are a lot of historic streetlights and some of them can be retrofitted and some cannot. So some of the lights at the observatory, for example up at the top right around the observatory, they put shields on the top of those lights so they're not blasting 360 degrees but the color temperature could be warmer. But then if you go down the hill there's still street lights which are blasting. You know they're historic lights and they're blasting 360 degrees out, of course, of course. And so you sort of run into this game where, okay, well, it's not really a territory, it's recreation of parks, and then, so you know, trying to get people's attention to take a look at that is a challenge. Oh man All right Art.

Bill McGeeney:

how can people learn more about what you do and where can they find you and how can they go down to fly down to USF and hang out with you for a semester?

Art Hushen:

What we do. Well, we're the National Institute of Crime Prevention. We provide the training, which includes a large lighting component. We train architects, urban designers, law enforcement, security nonprofits to work with communities and work with the different cities to apply these strategies and show how to write the standards and codes for that too. So that's the training component. We also have an association, the United States Septet Association. We just presented in San Diego last week we had a good turnout San Diego Dark Sky chapter presented on what they were doing in the region to support Dark Sky. So again, we bring in a variety of professionals to share their experiences and what the common goal is creating a safe environment. And so that set of associations. So the NICP to take a look for us we're under the T-H-E, nicpcom, the National Institute of Craft, productioncom, and the other one is the US CEPTED or U-S-C-P-T-E-Dcom, and then I encourage everybody to join. We're like-minded, we share the experiences. We're involved with DARS guys, we're involved with IES, so it's a fun group to get involved.

Bill McGeeney:

Excellent, jeff, all right. Where do people head out to Reddit?

Jeff Schmalz:

Give us the best Reddit plug you got. I can give you the address it's redditcom. Forward slash r. Forward slash dark sky. We describe it as the place for finding, sharing and preserving dark skies. I would describe it's not just light pollution, it's every sort of topic about dark skies. You know, if you're a dark sky enthusiast, I think everyone's got their own little topic. There's a place that I really like to find the story about, and we tend to do them all, so you'll find some things you haven't seen before and things you have.

Bill McGeeney:

Great. And is it just you moderating, or do you have a team over there Right now? It's just me. We are reaching out for more people.

Jeff Schmalz:

So there you go, if you're using it and you're looking to help moderate the job that everyone thanks you for. I'm sure I don't want to jinx it, but it's really easy. No one ever causes a problem.

Bill McGeeney:

That's great, great to hear. It's a really great Reddit. And first, let's finish out tonight with a couple of things. First, designations that maybe some of you weren't aware of and an interesting piece on light art to close out the show. First and I hope you're not sick of this word If you haven't figured it out yet collaboration is the name of the game and through the combined effort of the Swansea Council, the Welsh Government, natural Resources Wales and the Goer Society, dark Sky Advocates and local environmental groups, the Wales-Goer Peninsula has been designated as an international dark sky community and, according to Forbes, this is one of the last remaining areas in South Wales with dark skies. So good luck to them. Congratulations.

Bill McGeeney:

Next nighttime lighting of sports fields are a perpetual source of community conflict. Let me tell you that, and I'm sure Jeff can definitely relay that one, but they shouldn't be. Were you aware, as I was not aware, that there's a Dark Sky approved sports lighting program through Dark Sky International? Started in 2023, where they only had three certified fields, it expanded fivefold in 2024 to include 15 US sites. Speaking as someone who reads the news each month, jeff, I think you can agree Field lighting is just a constant neighborhood battle and feels like a no-brainer solution. I've seen some really good field lights and I don't understand why anyone would put up bad ones. There's some really good ones.

Jeff Schmalz:

Well, it's the reason why they're leaving it on. I think we have to talk about it as well. Some of these things I've read. A story that I posted on Reddit was about an English Premier League team that leaves their stadium lights on all night long, only just to have the grass grow because it's too cloudy at night. So they're using the lights, and that affects everyone in the neighborhood, everyone around, for miles and kilometers, I should say.

Bill McGeeney:

It can be really frustrating for people, that's true, and I guarantee you they're not using good lighting. I've never seen a stadium with good lighting. I'll put it that way.

Jeff Schmalz:

Yeah.

Bill McGeeney:

But I've seen, especially around here, I've seen a nice big soccer area. You know that's some traditional football, I guess you would say Out there, in just not far from us. They have some phenomenal fixtures and it's a good setup. You know they do a good job with it. So it's not odd when we go down to Florida your state down there, art, pensacola they have some nice spots down there with some good lighting. It's not the norm, but it's not out either. So hopefully one day we'll get there. Let's close out this month with something really interesting, and I'm curious about your all's take on this one.

Bill McGeeney:

Light displays are often given a title of art in the winter months, usually without any artistic validation beyond the fact that it's just bright and a light. However, john Ong, a Malaysian artist, has been blending LED bars into astonishing visual epics. Currently he is debuting a piece of an outside exhibit called Halo. The exhibit sits in the confines of a building that formerly was a Buddhist temple in Taiwan, the Shi De Bai Pavilion. In keeping with Buddha's concept of light as a metaphor for enlightenment, the exhibit utilizes light bars to project individual light beams in a visual experience that can best be described as checking the eye and believing that the light is actually floating midair towards you. What do you guys think of this one?

Art Hushen:

I want to see it. That sounds very cool. Good experience. Yeah, you had me once. You said it was enclosed, so I mean that would be fun to take.

Bill McGeeney:

It's not fully enclosed, it's more like a pagoda, I guess.

Jeff Schmalz:

It's in an urban environment.

Art Hushen:

Yeah, it's in an urban environment.

Bill McGeeney:

It's definitely not a natural environment. It's an urban environment.

Jeff Schmalz:

It always brings up the question, I think and it's come up I don't know before on your podcast how far can art go against public needs and public desires? How much is this light actually helping and how much is light hurting?

Spencer SooHoo:

I agree. The question is how bright and how visible is it from afar?

Bill McGeeney:

I'll say this To your point. I think it's visually, the pictures I see here. It's really well thought out and it really looks like a visual experience. And you know what well thought out and it really looks like a visual experience and you know what. It's not like something we see with, say, some unnamed places in San Francisco where you know you'll have people light up the whole park or have laser beams going across market street, stuff like that. This, this actually looks like it's trying to be art. Now, hey, the merits of it, you know, is it's light pollution or not. I'll leave that for you at home to debate, but it is very interesting. Definitely check out that link because it is curious, it's cool, it's curious.

Bill McGeeney:

I want to thank my guests today the educator, law enforcement veteran Art Hushen, redditor, dark Skies founder Jeff Schmaltz, and researcher and amateur astronomer Spencer Suhu. Thank you guys so much for joining me today. I want to thank you at home for staying with us today, as you can learn more about today's show by visiting the link over on the show description as a reminder. You can reach out to us on Instagram, facebook, linkedin, tiktok, youtube and more, or simply via text in the show notes. You can also email me billheadlightpollutionnewscom. This show was recorded on February 16th 2025. I'm your host, bill McGeaney, reminding you to only shine a light where it's needed. Have a great March.

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Bill McGeeney

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Art Hushen

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