June 2025: Gucci Bag Deep State!

This month's guests:

• David Eicher, Editor-in-Chief of the Astronomy Magazine.
• Nancy Gonlin,  Professor of Anthropology at Bellevue College.
• Michael Colligan, Host of Restoring Darkness.

Bill's News Picks:

• This is Why You’re Afraid of the Woods at Night, Blair Braverman, Outside. 
• Artificial light pollution could fuel growth of toxic algal blooms, James Dinneen, New Scientist. 
• Street lights to be switched off across major roads to slash pollution levels with new AI cameras, GBNews. 
• The enduring glow of London's historic gas lamps, CBS Sunday Morning. 
• LED Street Lights Killing Seabirds on Cape Verde, Associação Projecto Vitó, Rare Bird Alert. 

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Transcript

Bill McGeeney: [00:00:00] Light pollution news. June, 2025. Gucci bag. Deep state. Wow. We have a great one for you today, starting with, are you afraid of the Dark? Well, you may be shocked by our panel's Answers, citizen Science looks at light effects on butterflies and East Riding of Yorkshire's. Testing the waters on some no light roadways.

This month I welcome host of Restoring Darkness podcast, Michael Kagen, editor in chief of Astronomy Magazine. David Eicher and professor of Anthropology from Bellevue College, Dr. Nancy Goland. Stay tuned for a great light pollution news coming right up.

Welcome to Light Pollution News. I'm your host, bill McGeeney, and each month we gather the news together and bring on three great guests to talk about it. If you're a first time listener, [00:01:00] welcome. We do the show twice a month and look at a topic that most folks probably overlook in their day to day, and that is how our artificial light at night actually affects us and the environment.

Before we get going today, I wanna make a note of an error on my part. In a past episode, we spoke about Ypsilon, a Michigan muddying, its dark sky retrofitting announcement. It appears that I was wrong and the community did a succinct job trying to convey the message, but the reporting on the story may have been less than well researched.

I carried a story based on the reporting presented. Next, I have just a few things I want to make them very quick. First, check out our website for links to today's show notes, all of the links, all of the articles we discuss, including a summary and a read along are over on our page for this show. We recently also put together a 2024 recap that you can use or point folks who are interested in learning about how artificial light.

Affects our environment, our [00:02:00] ecology. So that's a 2024 recap of all the news that we had come through. So why not check that out over on our website. Next, we also have the many ways for you to reach out and ask questions, share comments. You can connect with us. You can find all of those via our show notes in whatever podcast player you're using right now.

But to quickly summarize, you can text us via the show notes themselves, or you can find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, or you can email me bill@lightpollutionnews.com. Finally, we have a sizable amount of costs and effort that go into bringing you this show twice a month. Some of that is covered by our gracious listeners, but we still have many gaps that we're looking to fill.

This is the main reason we don't do video. We just don't have the capacity to stretch out and do it. Cost involves show production. That's largely me, including research and show builds. Engineering. That's our man, Caden, and our robust social media program, and that's my wife, Caitlin. If you like what we do, why not consider becoming [00:03:00] a supporter?

You can learn more about the benefits of being a supporter via today's show notes. Cost is very low, starts at $3 a month, which makes it one of the cheapest ways you can help us continue to expand awareness and communication around the topic of a sustainable night. If you're able to and you find the show valuable, why not support the show For you listener who already supports light pollution news, thank you very much.

Your assistance really does help us pay down our fixed costs, and it helps us be able to do what we do. This is a lot of work bringing it to you every month, but we are doing it because we believe that this news needs to get out there and that we should keep all of you at home up to date in the easiest way possible.

So thank you once more. Let me welcome my guest for this show. I'm very excited about this lineup. First up, let me welcome to the show David Eker, David, whom some of you may know from his work as editor in chief of one of my favorite magazines, astronomy Magazine. David, you have authored an astounding [00:04:00] 26 books on science and history.

You currently sit in the boards of multiple organizations when including the Law Observatory. Again, I, I did not know, I knew you altered some books, not 26, and I didn't know you sat on the board of law, which is pretty exciting stuff. Welcome to Light Pollution News, Dave. 

David Eicher: Well, thank you so much for having me.

You know what they say, everyone needs a hobby, huh? Might as well do some writing. 

Bill McGeeney: I was shocked too. You, you do some history writing too. I didn't. I didn't know the history stuff. 

David Eicher: It's a long story. I don't wanna hijack the, the motion of things here, but, but long ago I got given a bunch of stuff from an ancestor who was a Civil War soldier under Generals Grant and Sherman.

So that got me going, you know, in my spare time when I got too tired of astronomy in the universe at large, going back in time, writing about some history. 

Bill McGeeney: Yeah. Well you got a lot there. I love, I love history too. I don't know if there's a tie in to that, especially, you know, I just went through reading the recent grant bio, [00:05:00] which I really, yes.

Really enjoyed and learned a lot on that. But anyway, don't want to, like you said, don't wanna go too far from the topic here. I gotta ask this, what happened with Amazon? 'cause I used to have Astronomy Magazine on my Kindle, and then Amazon dropped. Everyone's magazines, 

David Eicher: you know, I don't know what happened with Amazon and with subscriptions that way.

I, I'm sorry. I can't really tell you. And so much of that stuff is fluid. And of course, everyone who's a lot younger than I am reads everything here now and no longer in print. So, you know, I, I'm not sure, but there are lots of ways to get astronomy. Don't want to make an overt pitch, but you can go to astronomy.com and there are lots of ways to find out about all the stuff we're publishing.

Bill McGeeney: Yeah. It, it, well for me, you know what I like having, I like having on a, a phone or a tablet because you know why it reads to me. 

David Eicher: So, absolutely. That's pretty good. Might as well make technology work for us. That's a good thing. [00:06:00]

Bill McGeeney: Definitely. And you have a, you have a podcast been seen on YouTube? I've watched a couple.

I. Well, 

David Eicher: I've done a variety of things and one of the things that I do every week is a, there there's a, the, in fact it's the largest telescope company in the world, works with us. It's called Celestron in Los Angeles, and they sponsor a, a, what's happening kind of this week in astronomy. So that's the thing that normally every week goes out there and, and you know, we're talking about sky events, you know, spacecraft, missions, all sorts of things that are going on because it's a really a golden age in understanding the universe here.

We've probably learned, you know, as much in the last generation as we knew from the previous couple hundred years before that. So it's a fire hose of information that we're getting now about the universe and, and that we're in. So 

Bill McGeeney: that's good because I know Robert Massey was on last month and it's not looking good for earth-based astronomy in the short term here.

David Eicher: Yeah. This is a rough period, to put it mildly here at the [00:07:00] moment, with funding and with support for, for all the sciences really. Yeah. Yeah. 

Bill McGeeney: My next guest here, I wanna welcome Dr. Nancy Goland to the show. Dr. Goland is a professor of anthropology over at Bellevue College in Washington. And you earned your PhD from somewhere nearby to me here in at Penn State University in Mesoamerican archeology.

Nancy Gonlin: Yes, I did. And my undergrad was at Junior outta college in Huntington, Pennsylvania. I'm a native Pittsburgher. 

Bill McGeeney: Oh, wow. You know, we go out to Raytown, Raytown Lake to do a lot of mountain biking and kayaking and enjoy that area. That's That's right by there. Wow. So you only went an hour up the street? 

Nancy Gonlin: Yes.

Raised Town Lake. There is a facility there by Junior outta college for the biology students, and they do lots of research there. 

Bill McGeeney: Wow, okay. Yeah, I I did not know that. Well, that's great. So you're essentially local. Well, you know, 

Nancy Gonlin: well, I was actually born in Bellevue, [00:08:00] Pennsylvania, but I now live in Bellevue, Washington.

Bill McGeeney: Yeah. How about that? How do you work? Something like that out. 

Nancy Gonlin: Yeah. So thank you. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm delighted to share my research with a wider audience. 

Bill McGeeney: Yeah. We're gonna get a little more into that in a second show this month. However, you know this, this whole idea, this, you created a field within archeology, a discipline of how people experience the nighttime environment.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about that. 

Nancy Gonlin: I was sitting there one day, or I should say one night, reading a book on daily practices, and I'm sitting by the fireplace and I'm drinking a glass of wine and I thought, well, wait a minute. What about nightly practices? What is there about the night in times past?

So I Googled nightly practices, archeology of the night, nocturnal archeology, everything, every synonym I could possibly think of. There's nothing there. And I ran this by my advisor from Penn State, [00:09:00] Dr. David Webster, and he said, I've never heard of that. So one of my local friends, Dr. Christine Dixon, hundred Mark, who is my colleague at Bellevue says, go for it.

I haven't heard of this either, but this sounds fantastic. So if you think about your own nocturnal footprint, there are places in your house that you use more during the night than during the day. There are artifacts, as I call them, that you use during the night. Instead of the day, maybe lighting.

Lighting always comes as a ready example of things that people use during the night that they don't use during the day. So all of these kinds of things. And I gathered together a group of people, archeologists, who had similar thoughts as I did, but hadn't formalized those into an archeology of the night, and thus it was formed.

So thank you for asking me about that. 

Bill McGeeney: And we'll, like I said, we'll get a little more into that in a [00:10:00] second show for this month. But yeah, I'm very excited. Very excited to talk to you, Nancy. So thank you for coming on. 

Nancy Gonlin: Thank you. 

Bill McGeeney: Lastly, I want to welcome fellow podcasters in this space, Michael Collagen.

Michael, you also host the Get A Grip on Lighting Podcast, restoring Darkness podcast, any lighting controls podcast. You have numerous lighting related services that you provide out there. Ontario where you're based. And I know we're recording this in the end of May, and tonight is the big night for you guys.

The Maple Leaf are trying to make miracles happen against the Panthers tonight, but uh, you have multiple businesses up there. Your lighting distribution company, Atlas Lighting sales, a lighting contracting, a company, lighting Solutions, lamp recycling company, waste diversion, any horticultural lighting contracting service, Ontario Scientific.

Hey Michael, welcome to the show. 

Michael Colligan: Yeah. Thanks for having me, bill. Yeah, 

Bill McGeeney: that's a mouthful. 

Michael Colligan: Yeah. Well, you know, I come at it from a different perspective. I'm quite [00:11:00] honored to be joined by, you know, such esteemed guests that you have here. But my perspective is from the front lines of the lighting industry, when I look at this issue, so how has light pollution created?

What are the barriers? Why do people continually sell light polluting equipment all the time? How do we get out of the trap? And so my experience in the lighting industry as a contractor and a distributor, and also someone that recycles lighting equipment, gives me a, a kind of a different perspective from the other people in the space and, and hopefully that, you know, we can work together to solve this environmental issue.

Bill McGeeney: What has been the response to other people from other people within the space? 

Michael Colligan: 50% of the lighting industry treats me as persona non grata. I. Not just for my work with Restoring Darkness, but also some of the work I, I do exposing, we call it the lighting industry Deep state, but it's just basically a network of nonprofit companies that have found ways to get their hooks into the lighting [00:12:00] industry and don't provide any value.

And so there's that aspect that of it. And the second part of it is the tie up with the Soft Lights Foundation. Mark Baker, the association that I'm a member of, the National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors, decided to partner with Mark very controversial figure in the lighting industry.

He advocates for a abandonment of LED as a a light source. And so that is extremely toxic to the lighting industry as you can imagine. But we are, we're open to his perspective. We don't agree on all things, but I think oftentimes I find the people that are most accurately pointing at the problem, that's what they're good at, and they should avoid maybe specifying the solution.

You know, like sometimes you listen to a political commentator and they're really good at pointing out the problem, but then they lose it when they start to tell you what we should do instead. Right. I think when it comes to light pollution, what I've discovered in over 150 Restoring Darkness podcasts, scientists from across the world, is that we don't really understand [00:13:00] electric light, how it works, how it affects us, and that it's time for, you know, the lighting industry to come out and recognize that electric light at night is a form of hazardous waste, wasted electric light at night.

That is, and that's gonna be a long road, and it's gonna shake a lot of people's trees and bushes. And so that's what I do. I consider myself a jester of the lighting industry in a way. Someone that can speak. To the Kings, but you know, with a little bit of tongue in cheek and that. So that's what we do at Get a Grip on lighting and these other shows.

I don't host the Lighting Controls podcast that is hosted by another team, but I'm the executive producer of that show. 

Bill McGeeney: Okay, gotcha. And we have Mark on here back in February, and he might be getting his wish now because with President Trump's plan to kind of stop pushing the LEDs as much, some s might not be getting the assistance that they would've had to do a conversion.

Michael Colligan: Yeah, the pushing of LEDs has largely been a catastrophe. It's loaded with like the black curtains being raised now on all the promises of super long life. It's really emerging that LED [00:14:00] light does cause health consequences for people that other light sources don't. Not that everybody's susceptible to that, but I think Mark Baker has made a clear case that there is a certain number of our population that are disabled by LED light at night, and that, you know, for the rest of us, maybe it's discomfort there, but for some people it's disabling and I don't think that can be denied anymore.

And again, this goes back to some of those non-profits that I called the lighting industry deep state that took the lighting industry down a path of single metric rules, all so lumens per watt. And this lumens per watt metric, has created a vast array of problems, which will take at least a decade, if not two or three decades, to sort out.

Bill McGeeney: We can talk on that probably for quite a bit. 

Michael Colligan: Yeah, I, I talk about this all the time and you know, a lot of people in the lighting industry don't like it, but too bad for them. I'm okay with that. 

Bill McGeeney: Well, we appreciate you being on here, Mike, so thank you. Let's, well, let me begin with a simple question, you guys.

Are any of you guys willing to fess off to being afraid of the dark? [00:15:00]

David Eicher: Absolutely. Now, yeah, everyone and Wisconsin for many, many years. But now I've moved to Tucson, which I can talk a little bit about later. One of the two important cities in Arizona with a nice lighting ordinance. And I went out about a month ago into the yard, you know, very early in the morning, still fairly dark and saw a bobcat sleeping in my yard.

So this has nothing to do with anything else at all. My yard is walled. Once I've seen a coyote in the yard, I. Going up, picking your head up and seeing a bobcat in your garden, that got my attention. So that's kind of resetting my caution for being out at night. But it has nothing to do with the usual dangers at night that people perceive that aren't there.

Nancy Gonlin: I grew up with five older brothers, so they were always playing monsters at night. So there were real monsters in my house [00:16:00] when I grew up. And like you, David, I live in an area, the foothills of the Cascades where you don't wanna check the mail at night, 

Bill McGeeney: the 

Nancy Gonlin: mailboxes, but a green belt and there are paw prints sometimes of cougars, bobcats, coyotes.

And then the usual deer and other creatures. So I don't go out at night here. I don't go for a walk. There are also bears roaming around. So, so far no casualties as far as I know, but pumas or cougars, whatever you wanna call them, mountain lions are known to attack people. That does not happen very often, but I'm not willing to test the statistics.

Bill McGeeney: Michael, you too. Everyone here is afraid of the dark. 

Michael Colligan: I think the, I think that there's a sublimity, I think maybe the professor can check, check my English there, but it, the darkest, sublime. Certainly. I grew up in the [00:17:00] city. I grew up in the city of Toronto, and I don't, I, I think I'm afraid of the dark and I'm afraid of people at in night, at nighttime, sometimes.

I don't think electric light is necessarily the solution to crime or, or is a cause of crime or the lack thereof is a cause of crime. 

Nancy Gonlin: There is a word of the day here. I don't know if you already know it since many of you are so familiar with light, but the study of ancient lighting is called ology. And there is actually an international LCH Neurological Association.

That quote is a nonprofit association that is dedicated to the knowledge of pre-modern lighting devices. So you can go to lch knowledgey.org and find out all about that. But it primarily focuses on classical archeology, Rome and Greece. But getting back to light itself, light is apathic. We desire it because it wards off evil, or we think that it does.

And. [00:18:00] It's also necessary for humans to see at night, but we have gone overboard in terms of how much light we need to see at night. We think it is limitless in terms of the light that we need. And Michael, I'm sure you're familiar with this, that there's so many places that are over light that do not need to be over litt, I should say.

Michael Colligan: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, and the, and the default is to, for our legal system, for insurance companies and for all these different institutions, is that if there's a crime there, well there should be more light there. And that's a straw man argument. There's no evidence to support that. In fact, there's growing evidence that, you know, I leave my house, I live in the country, a country home now a kilometer.

Or you'd say like, uh, whatever, two thirds of a mile back from the road in the middle of nowhere. I make sure my house has no light on it at night. So, and that's, that generates safety as well. That's a different form of safety that humans have relied upon. I'm with an anthrop anthropologist, so I don't wanna step outta line.

But humans also use [00:19:00] darkness as well for safety. 

Nancy Gonlin: Yes, they do. You know better than I in terms of modern perspective though, of using darkness for safety. But if you can see something, so can a criminal. So more lighting does not necessarily equate to more safety. 

Bill McGeeney: David, you were gonna say something? 

David Eicher: Well, I was just gonna say, I was being tongue in cheek really with the Bobcat story.

Virtually most all animals, unless they're sick. Or, you know, you corner one and, and there's a mother bear with cubs are much more leery of getting close to a human being than we are of them. So that, that's a, a funny story in reality, there's virtually no danger in normal situations at night in any sense like that.

And if you go back, you know, the saddest thing of all with light pollution right now for me is to look at an image of the United States as an example from space. You know, everything east of the Mississippi [00:20:00] River except for small areas is lit up like a Christmas tree and it's not that much better west of the Mississippi River.

So, you know, as a starting point, I don't think that it makes a lot of sense from anyone's point of view, except possibly for profitability of electrical. Supplier companies to attempt to light up the entire solar system. You know, that that has nothing to do with any sensibility whatsoever except to use a lot of electricity and, and spread a lot of photons around.

So there's a hell of a lot of progress to be made with what's going on right now. You know, if you go back essentially two centuries to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, everyone knew the night sky and it was important to them. And they, you know, both seasonally for all sorts of reasons with planting and with rituals and with all sorts of other things, it was crucially important to them.

Now, a small majority of people are [00:21:00] familiar with the sky, so that's a, a real, and, and really unnecessarily because if lighting were sensible and controlled in a good way, the light. Emanating everywhere at night in the United States and in Europe and other places would be much less. And it would be a better world to live in, not only for us, but for those animals and all sorts of other ways as well.

Bill McGeeney: You guys came prepared today, man, one simple question and we have, we have really gone deep here, so this is good. That's good. I like that. Yeah, and I 

Nancy Gonlin: even mentioned evolutionary psychology. Of course, if you're an evolutionary psychologist, you look to our deep roots and see that people are hardwired to fear the night based on eons of avoiding predators who hunted at night in the dark.

So that's the thinking for an evolutionary psychologist. And it's difficult being one of those professionals because how do you, uh, support your hypotheses? How do you can't ever prove [00:22:00] anything. So it's a difficult thought, but there it is, from evolutionary psychology, and that's about all I know about it.

Bill McGeeney: What about this? So outside magazine, Blair Braverman actually explored this topic much like we are right now, and he proposed that maybe it's the realization that us as people aren't as superior or invulnerable to our environment as we tend to believe during the daytime. So maybe Knight actually allows us to recognize how much a part of this ecosystem we really are stands, day-to-day niceties that kind of we pamper ourselves with.

What do you guys think about that? 

David Eicher: I think it's absolutely true. I mean, you think at night, you know, not that this is literally true, but we certainly feel much more vulnerable and that's going back, there are a lot of ways that we, you know, harken back to one or 200,000 years ago when we were wandering around with small groups hunting around the plains, whether it was Africa or out of Africa.

And, and that [00:23:00] danger was much more real. Now it's not so much anymore. You know, we don't, we don't need to, you know, have allegiance to Hunter gather groups of 30 people. And we also don't need to be so afraid of, of the dark or the unknown of what may be out there because, you know, we're, we're essentially safe almost all the time, you know, from a statistical viewpoint at night, wandering around through a city, even at night, unarmed.

So there's a lot of the irrational fear that goes back to human origin still in our minds. 

Nancy Gonlin: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And we cannot discount those origins either. And the fear at night that people have, there certainly is a lot to evolutionary psychology, but as I said, I'm not an expert in that field.

I just wanted to bring up that thought from that. I 

Michael Colligan: had the Nadine Becki on episode 1 28 of Restoring Darkness, and she's from Lebanon, and it gave me a new perspective on the whole thing. And she [00:24:00] said, you know when planes are flying over your country, bombing it? Mm-hmm. And dropping bombs on top of you, what you want as soon as the bombing stops is to be able to turn on a light.

And see something, and that kind of opened up a whole sort of different perspective to this, that there are people in the world where Westerners, I'm from Toronto, it's very safe. I mean, we talk about how dangerous Toronto is now, but by, you know, this is the safest place to ever live in the history of the world.

I mean, I, I don't, I, I mean maybe there's safer areas out there, but we live in a very safe time. Nadine really put that in perspective for me, that, you know, when you're in a situation of catastrophic death or destruction, what humans want to do is turn on lights. So, you know, we have to be careful that we're not decadent, you know, when we talk about this issue a little bit, you 

Bill McGeeney: know?

Yeah. Yeah. That's an excellent point, Mike. Yep. Well, I'm going to move us a little bit forward here. I wanna get into ecology news. We'll get into some policy, so light pollution, specifically in this case, we're gonna talk about [00:25:00] sky glow. It can drive cyanobacteria growth, adding more proof that artificial light changes aquatic ecosystems.

If you home, who may find the idea of cyanobacteria a bit nebulous. Cyanobacteria isn't all bad, obviously you'll find it in microbes in agriculture. That's usually where you hear in the news. However, once in waterways, artificial light may influence the growth of the algae to levels that are hazardous to all their living organisms.

In this case, researchers at the Leitz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries found that it takes a tiny amount of light to negatively charge waterways with an overabundance of Seattle bacteria. And that's only 0.06 Lux, which is they cited, is as faint as sky glow or otherwise known as, say, light given off from a early quarter moon that would increase the algae levels in that waterway by 32 times.

It's already established that sunlight influences bloome growth, and now very modest after hours [00:26:00] lighting may continue to spur growth. Few episodes back. We also mentioned the citizen science projects to chart nocturnal species. Oh, no. You guys ever partake in any citizen science projects? Michael Shaken said, no.

David Eicher: I have not. I've been so busy doing other things. 

Bill McGeeney: Yeah, they do have some time requirements. Yeah. 

Nancy Gonlin: Yeah. Not up to this point, but I think it's something that I should investigate, especially to get my students involved. 

Bill McGeeney: Yeah. Well, a paper in the Royal Entomological Society researchers took a look at the very popular citizen size program, iNaturalist Free A Home who may not be aware.

iNaturalist is a pretty neat application. It utilizes machine learning algorithms to identify best guesses of what a particular plant, tree, or insect may be. In this study, researchers saw to identify how many species of butterflies fell victim to the flight to light behavior exhibited by so many insects through citizen [00:27:00] science observations.

Researchers found that diurnal species were no less susceptible to artificial light. In this case. Specifically, they counted 107 species of butterflies that fell victim to typically the pool of residential lighting. That's unshielded, usually porch style lighting. And then we also have one from over in the Eastern Atlantic.

And here's an interesting one. The archipelago of Cape Verde has undertaken an LED streetlight conversion. Gone are the orange glows of sodium vapor lighting, and OUTTA country has installed new 40 YLED streetlights this past winter. And would you know it, those unshielded, high intensity bright lights are already having an effect for one.

People seem to be in favor of 24 7 bright as daytime lighting. Well, at least in the loan article I came across in the conversion, they enjoy the safety effect. On the other hand, there appears to be a major unintended consequence, one that sadly is kind of highly predictable and avoidable. [00:28:00] According to Rare Bird Alert, hundreds of seabirds have died since the new LED lights went online.

The lighting hold your breath for this one was not proceeded by any environmental impact assessment. A recent survey identified over 150 dead birds, including the Boyd Shearwater, Cape Verde storm petrol. The wife faced storm petrol and the leeches storm petrol. The official cause of death appears to include animal impact with the lights themselves.

I'm not sure how legit that is, but that's what they cite. So I wanna point out that many folks have a tendency to kind of view this, like Michael, you say this to kind of view this topic through a developed lens, but in developing world, they have similar issues that we have. There's good lighting and there's proper lighting.

Michael Colligan: Yeah, I would say that nobody knows what to do. I would say that that's not the case. I would say the lighting industry does not have an answer for these problems and because there's no return to HPS, so we got very lucky as whatever you wanna call it, a species. If you wanna say that [00:29:00] for whatever reason, high pressure sodium was 1800 Kelvin and low pressure sodium, which is what?

Which preceded it was 1800 Kelvin and incandescent was 2,700 Kelvin, and halogen was 3000 Kelvin, or 2,800 Kelvin. So we got lucky. Those sources happened to be made and became our major source of outdoor lighting at night. If you ask people in 2001, 2010, 2018, even into now, what's better? The white light or the, if you ask a citizen on the street, what do you want?

The white light or the orange light, they're all gonna say they want the white light. But we have to remember, we don't go around looking up at lights. Only lighting torks like me do that. Okay, I do. I walk around looking up at lights. Yes, I do that all the 

Nancy Gonlin: time. 

Michael Colligan: People that are interested in the topic. The second thing I would say is that the lighting industry does not distinguish or differentiate between different sources except for the sun and the moon.

So moonlight and sunlight are something different to the lighting industry. And is treated differently. But [00:30:00] the lighting industry treats incandescent, halogen, HBS, fluorescent metal halide, and of course light emitting diodes the same as if there's no difference between them. And I think Mark Baker at Soft Light's Foundation has shown that there's a massive difference between how humans perceive and accept LED light, at least how it's created now and HBS and incandescent.

So I would say that you can say there's proper lighting or not. I would say the lighting industry does not know what to do, and there's nobody in the world that knows how to properly deploy LED light to solve all these different problems that you're gonna bring up over the course of your show. It's an open question.

Bill McGeeney: What about shielding? There's plenty of studies and plenty of research out there proving the benefits of shielding. 

Michael Colligan: Yeah, but we shielded HPS lights too. That's not an, that's not an innovation. The problem with LED lights is not that they're not shielded, is that you can actually see that bright light source and it glares into your eyes.

LED's the only unreflected light source we've ever created. So old light fixtures would have a reflector around them. So there was like this [00:31:00] mixing of light that would happen. And so the light would be bouncing in all different directions from like some kind of a filament, and then it would come out of the light fixture.

LEDs are more like a laser beam. And so when you talked about the aquatic thing, ze schroer in Germany did a lot of work on this and she, she basically proved that lights on the shore push the little fish out deeper. Little fish get eaten, da da, da causes all kinds of different problems. But LEDs will penetrate far deeper into the ocean than HPS or mental halite induction any of these other technologies could ever do because they're reflected light sources.

They're not directional light sources. So LEDs are far more damaging. As an industry, as a society, we have to pull up this black curtain on our number one most effective climate change mitigation, which has been LED lighting, and we have to just accept it. That doesn't mean we have to return to other sources, but we gotta do something about this 'cause it's a really serious problem.

Nancy Gonlin: One thread that ran through all of these articles on the ecology to me, is that even [00:32:00] microspec are affected by nighttime lighting, and sometimes the smallest of species are more greatly affected than larger species by environmental changes. So whether you're talking about cyanobacteria or insects or birds or humans, we need to look at the full range, not just the most visible kinds of kind of poster children, if you will, for reducing lighting such as the sea turtles that breed on the beach.

But even the tiny little microorganisms that are eaten are affected by all of this lighting. 

Bill McGeeney: So Nancy, you hit a really good point. I think, Michael, you really point out the mechanics of Nancy's point. How does someone at home work to convey that conversation? 

Michael Colligan: Light pollution is pollution. Like that is what people, it's not a metaphor, you know?

It's not something that we're saying, Hey, turn off your lights. Germany has recognized electric light at night as a pollutant, as a [00:33:00] country. They've recognized that that electric light is a pollutant. We need some kind of regulations or something. We need some messaging to the general public that not only is this the pollutant, but it hurts human beings.

It hurts wildlife and LEDs are the worst for this, by a magnitude. There's nothing like this. We've never been able to create lights, so nobody would have the electrical infrastructure or the ability to afford to create 160 foot candles in their backyard. I'm testifying in a court case next week in Rhode Island.

This guy's got 60% higher foot candles than you need in a college stadium for 4K HD TV before LED came along. He would have to change the transformer in his neighborhood to do that. He couldn't have that much electricity use in his property. It wouldn't be possible. But now, because you can buy it, you know, the LED light on Amazon for 115 bucks and put it up, and people don't consider light pollution.

They don't consider light trespass trespass when it is, and our legal system's not ready for it. This is why [00:34:00] I think this is a decades long or a 50, 60, a hundred year problem to solve because the lighting industry doesn't accept it. The lighting industry has to accept it, number one. 'cause if anyone's going to fix it, who is it gonna be?

Is it gonna be other than anyone other than the lighting industry? And the lighting industry has its head firmly in the sand. I mean, they're starting to see progress, but they don't even recognize LED light in their metrics as being different from HPS or metal highlighter incandescent. And they're fundamentally different sources.

They're constituted differently for many different factors. And so this is going to involve a lot of pain. And people have to do the number one thing they don't wanna do. And that's admit they're wrong. Admit they made a massive mistake. And the lighting industry is absolutely reticent to do that, which is why 50% of the lighting industry does not like Michael Colligan.

Bill McGeeney: Well, we like him, Mike. So, but I guess my question is, if I'm someone at home, 'cause that it's gonna have to be grassroots, right? It's gonna have to be people who are in their [00:35:00] neighborhoods. The most obvious example of lighting issues comes from bridges. Usually you have, everyone wants to light up their bridge.

How do you convey that? How do you convey the issues with that? How would you even convey that to D governmental body that is running that bridge or. Whoever is maintaining that bridge. 

Nancy Gonlin: Well, apart from Bridges, and I'm sidestepping the bridge question here, 'cause I don't know about bridges, but if you look at small victories that people can implement and start, I have an example from my own housing complex, right outside the bedroom window.

For some reason, a few years ago, the board, the HOA Board decided that we needed more lights and they installed these big globes and this big light and I. I complained to a board member about how this was not necessary and that if you're going to have lights that fine, that's fine if people want more lights, but [00:36:00] they need to be shielded.

So finally this year, the board is bringing out these shields for these obnoxious lights that shine into people's bedrooms. And I will take that small victory. They're not changing the kind of light bulb, but at least they're shielding it. So it's not, the light's not going out into the atmosphere, into the trees where the birds are and into the bedroom where people sleep.

That's a tiny little victory that you can have at home and, and in terms of a conversation with people in your household or your community, and as I said, I will take that very small victory and then you go from there. Mike, 

Michael Colligan: could I, I'll throw, I'll throw something in here on, on the table with that. So, I think lighting, light pollution is going through a process.

You gotta remember when the, the Eiffel Tower is spectacularly beautiful. Okay. Like I, I've been on the sand with my wife eating dinner and you're going down. It's absolutely [00:37:00] gorgeous. So light pollution, you know, is, is on a pathway. And I think it's somewhere between kind of annoying and conspicuous. And we have to get it to the point where it becomes disgusting.

'cause we're disgusted by pollution who isn't disgusted like pollution. When you find out that your city's been dumping raw sewage into the lake because they don't have the money to fix the plant or whatever it is, like these things are disgusting. So we have to move the thing forward. And little victories, like, you know, that Nancy had in, in her housing authority or HOA, those are great things and we need to encourage those things.

But when, if you're a, if you're an advocate or you're a person. In this space, you have to first believe that light pollution is pollution, that it's a type of real pollution, and you say that to yourself. This is not a metaphor, and people have a very hard time with it. And then I would say, make sure your lights go off after 10 o'clock.

That's another little thing you can do really easily. Turn off your outdoor lights In many, many ways, we're in an 

David Eicher: [00:38:00] unconstrained experiment now. We have been for a long time. And you know, the, the, there, there are all sorts of hazards that we're doing whatever we want or what industry wants to do. We want, you know, there are no laws to prevent a better force of action.

More intelligent force of action, largely since the industrial revolution, putting more carbon dioxide into earth's atmosphere and warming earth's atmosphere. This happened on Venus several billion years ago. Venus is not a very nice place to try to breathe right now. This is essentially second grade chemistry.

Yet the forces that want to, you know, converting to sources of energy that would, that would benefit the generations that may or may not come 10,000 generations from now, not just the current people and their paychecks. That's a difficult thing. So, you know, how do you, how do you, you know, again, I'll go [00:39:00] back to Tucson and Flagstaff for two examples that have already access to Control Lion an intelligent way because there's a lot of astronomy going on here in these two areas.

So they have, of course, full cutoff fixtures. They have essentially what, what, this is what the International Dark Sky Association recommending elsewhere as, as well, with a longtime group that was pushed for Intelligent light and was founded by Dave Crawford, who was in stronger 52 have, you know, full cutoff shielded fixtures.

To have 3,500 k or ideally 3000 k color temperature that would not interfere with astronomy. So things like the high pressure sodium or a disaster for trying to collect data and so on, let alone just spreading photons all over the nearby universe, you know, to maximize the profit. So, you know, how do you enact that though?

Nobody's gonna do that voluntarily if [00:40:00] they don't have to. It's gonna cost a lot of money to convert over to doing intelligent things, just as with the energy industries as well, you know, with net result of, of global warming of climate change. So, so it, it's, I don't think anything's gonna happen until the law requires it, which it has in a city of 548,000 Tucson.

We're in the city right now and a city of 77,000, the Flagstaff. They, they're sort of good examples of poster children of, of, if that spreads elsewhere, how we could control lighting in a more intelligent way. But most people aren't interested in that or aware of it. 

Bill McGeeney: You know, David, you make a good point on having top level controls right Here in Philadelphia, we're often the poster child for the lights out movement.

We are not a great poster child for lights Out movement. We're just the one who became kind of known for the lights out movement with all [00:41:00] new buildings. They all look kind of like old school arcade games now because you have stuff going up the side building, everything looks like some kind of dystopian hellscape in a sci-fi movie.

Many of the buildings participate in Lights Out, which is only a four hour program, goes from midnight to four, and that's during certain months of the year. But many don't. You know? And, and they don't because they want to keep the advertising going. It's not easy. But I do have some good stories here. So, the good news, first up, there's a group down in Norfolk.

You'll recall back in November of wow, November of 2023, we covered news clip where Norfolk got $3 million in federal aid to kickstart streetlight conversion that was estimated to cost $5 million. The streetlight conversion at the time was being administered by Dominion Energy. Who still is administering it to this day?

Well, it appears that not everyone was a fan of this implementation. Shocker. [00:42:00] Namely, they, they're utilizing 3,004,000 k color temperature fixtures. This group, the Citizens for Responsible Lighting, is a grassroots neighbor initiative pushing back against the harsh realities of light. I. It's about a dozen people advocating for 2,700 Kelvin neighborhood lighting and 2200 Kelvin sensitive environmental lighting.

Kinda common sense stuff there to us. But to convey that to politicians and law enforcement, it seems to be hiccups. Michael, on that law enforcement side, have you encountered anything where it's a good conversation that you can have regarding the color temperature? 'cause I know they're really concerned about that color temperature.

Michael Colligan: Yeah, so the, there's all sorts of different issues that become, you become aware of when you, when you convert massive amounts of streetlights to LED and there's different kind, like there's some of them, how they impact humans, how they impact the environ. It's very complicated. And then you have various [00:43:00] stakeholder groups that have different priorities and what you always find, whether it's wherever you go, there's always these community groups.

And they're unaffiliated. They're not, they're not connected to Dark Sky International. They're not connected to us at restoring darkness. They're not connected to you guys, and they're working on their own, and they reach out to us and they don't have any money and they're not organized, but they want to stop, you know, this particular lighting upgrade or that particular lighting upgrade, and they have various amounts of effect.

Usually the smaller the town is, the more likely they are to have an effect. The bigger the town is, the less likely they're to have an effect. The town's like City of Toronto, you're not gonna impact them with a small citizens group. You know, I, when it comes to law enforcement, I think they're gonna be the last ones to come around.

You know, they, if you ask most police officers, they want everything lit up like a prison yard so they can see everything. But if you were to watch, you know, some of the riots that went on there was that young fellow, I can't remember his name, but he was in the middle of the street with a rifle. For some reason, like this is mind blowing for a [00:44:00] Canadian that people can walk around with rifles.

Bill McGeeney: Yeah, it's every day here. Don't worry about it. 

Michael Colligan: That's a whole other story. But this kid was in the middle of the street and because the street lights were so bright, you could see everything clearly. You could see the police officers in the scene, you could see this guy standing, Kyle Rittenhouse, that was his name, and he was standing right in the middle of the street.

You could see everything and you could see the person running up behind him to hit him. And it was just, it's almost like there's an element of prison yard psychosis. I think that can happen. Now, I'm not a researcher. I'm gonna, you know, Nancy can probably, you know, much better comment on this, but my instincts are that actually if they were to warm and dim those lights, it would give human beings a psychological signal that it's home time.

It's time to go home. The lights are out going off. Right? And when they have these cities so brightly lit at night, I, I often wonder to myself if, if they were to warm them, like tune, not turn them off instantly, but just start tuning them. All this technology exists, tune the lights from that 3,500 Kelvin David was [00:45:00] talking about, which maybe comes on brighter and at the twilight.

And as it gets dark, and then you start tuning it down to 1800 Calvin over a slow period of time. And we have evidence that this kind of queuing is the best way to wake up mothers and babies in the nicu, in the, in the hospitals. That if you wake them up like that, they all start waking up on their own.

And the hospitals, they've shown that when you start to dim the lights slowly and warm them up, people start saying, Hey, maybe it's time to go home now. And so the nurses don't have to go around hustling to get people out of the room. They go home on their own. 

Bill McGeeney: Imagine that right. 

Michael Colligan: And so I think the, the electric lighting, you know, what we have to convince law enforcement of is that electric lighting is also the cause of crime.

Now we need evidence, and you're gonna need boatloads of evidence. But my instinct is that, you know, certain types of crime exists like homelessness or vagrancy or people living in tents. They like darkness. So maybe you'll have to solve your homelessness problem in Canada, [00:46:00] United States, you know what I mean?

That kind of crime is ha happening. But break and entry, burglaries, smash and grabs and cars. And I think some of this riot that we have seen increase from all movements, it seems to be, it's not a left wing thing or a right wing thing. You see people staying later out at night in these areas protesting for all sorts of different reasons.

And I think if the police had a signal, Hey, why don't we try to tune these lights down and dim them slowly? Maybe people would go home before the riot or before whatever the, the, whatever you want to call it before the unrest starts. Start giving people a signal that the party's over. So I think that we could convince law enforcement to use these tools maybe effectively and with more sophistication.

Do I have hopes it's gonna happen in the next five years? No, 

Bill McGeeney: not 

Michael Colligan: at all. 

Bill McGeeney: Well, Michael, you, you make a good point here. We've had instances where kids will kind of take over major downtown streets, and it's all because you have like this daytime and it's nighttime, but it's [00:47:00] daytime. So you know, you have the ability to be able to see everything you're doing.

So you have a big collection of kids bring all their cars and do all things that kids would do. You know, 

Michael Colligan: we're also blasting their pituitary glands with high Kelvin 5,000 K light triggering in their young brains that it's noon sky daylight right now and you should be out riding your skateboard. Like that's real there.

They're, they're in those areas where you have high density, where you need darkness restoration, not night preservation. You need to restore the darkness. You're smashing those people with right on their pituitary glands with high kelvin 5,000 K signals, which is clearly telling them it's time to get, get up and have a day, wake 

Bill McGeeney: up and go, 

Michael Colligan: yeah, that's what, that's literally, literally what you're doing with those lights.

Right? And so when we warm them, the effects less when we, when we're able to dim them and shield them, the effects less. And so what we want to do is stop doing so much damage with lighting and only use it where we need it effectively. 

Bill McGeeney: Do you think we're learning anything? Like do you think [00:48:00] communities, do you think administrators, they're, they're actually learning anything about lighting during all of this?

Because there's been a lot of pushback here. We had our LED implementation. There's been a lot of different pushback, a lot of different hands raised. 

Michael Colligan: My opinion is that the lighting industry, so leaders in the lighting industry, I'm not gonna call anybody out. They know who they're, you know what I mean?

We know who they're, I mean, I mean, I'm not gonna say them here 'cause there's no point in naming names or anything like that, but there's institutions that are in charge of this in the United States. And those institutions also control everything in Canada too. 'cause we just mimic their, their regulations.

They need to come out and say, we made a mistake. This is a big mistake and we need to fix it. And it's because this incrementalism, this idea of balance, you know, that's not, we need to rethink of the whole outdoor electrical lighting system that we have, and we need to rethink it. And we need to rethink it from the perspective of consumption.

Like we use so much of the world's electric lighting in, in Canada, the United States right now, we're using so much of it in [00:49:00] comparison to other countries. And when does this come become conspicuous consumption? Like North Korea is often shown with South Korea as like, look at how dilapidated and awful it is in North Korea.

They have no light pollution. Like when that turns around and we start having the Gucci suit becomes a, a dark country at night. I think that's when you know when, when countries can, politicians need bragging rights, they need winds, right? So if it can become cool to restore night, to preserve darkness, to create dark skies for astronomers, when that can really get the momentum on in the people at the level of the grassroots, then I think we'll start to see change.

But it's gonna take a long time, and that's why I'm telling everybody we have to be patient and push and push. It's a movement right now. There's no one in charge of this. So this is a a hundred year issue to solve. It's gonna take a long time. You're not gonna see the stars in San Francisco, David, anytime soon.

I'm just gonna break the news to you. Probably agree it's gonna take a very long time. Yeah. 

Nancy Gonlin: If I may [00:50:00] get back to the point that Michael was making about lighting and its effect on humans, we have long used lighting to affect mood. Think of a romantic dinner and the lighting you would have for that versus taking your child to McDonald's or.

Some other horrible place. Excuse my comment there. But 

Bill McGeeney: yeah, so you don't wanna, you don't want to eat in a factory 

Nancy Gonlin: anyway, so it makes sense that we can use lighting and extend that perception of it to create different kind of ambiance, whether you're talking about your own house, your own dinner time, or the neighborhood or city streets or whatever.

And you do bring up one article bill about the Gaslights in England. Oh yes. Yes. And how some of those are, well, 1000, 100 of of them anyway are still [00:51:00] there. And that has a very different ambiance, does it not than modern street lighting. And that's what we expect from Mary Old England, isn't it? So it has a lot to do with tourism.

Bill McGeeney: Let, let's talk about that real fast for over 200 years, right? Parts of London have had this warm. Some called cozy glow of the gas lamp. So gas lamps, there used to be 55,000. Now it's only 1100. Remain the people who really like it, like the warm glow 'cause it can't be replicated with your laser LEDs.

Right. Michael, the article this, this actually came to us from CBS and the article cite that, you know, hey, it's better for nocturnal species. It has more of an architectural uniqueness and charm. Yeah, it's pretty stunning. Last month we had a story that someone actually bought up all the old Brooklyn Bridge lights when they did the LED conversion.

And he, the guy, you know, he is just, he bought them up, sold to collectors, but he, he was reminiscing. He wanted to bring back the warm [00:52:00] lights of the Brooklyn Bridge and now. Saying about how much it looks like a surgical operation or some kind of, you know, mechanical space versus this architectural bridge essentially going back streetlights.

I do have another good story here, and this is East Riding of Yorkshire over it sits east of Leeds in York, south of North York. Moores over in England decide to switch off more than 600 streetlights with the explicit goal of trying to assess whether car headlights make lampposts redundant. And this is according to the UK Department of Transportation.

80% of road accidents occur during the daytime hours, but the test will run for a year, tracking a behaviors of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians by use of an AI powered thermal imaging camera. It should also be noted that the counselor previously installed thousands of solar powered road stud lights and previously upgraded the reflectivity of road lines and signage.

The test will not involve any residential areas. There's a back and forth. A UK is an [00:53:00] interesting testing. It's kind of a, you have a lot of different schemes going on in the UK driven by energy usage and energy cost, and you'll see communities shut off the lights and people, they're not thrilled about that.

And then you see communities dim the lights and sometimes that's a positive for the community. Other times that's negative. But here they're talking about kind of main corridors, kinda equivalent to highways that would just not have streetlights. 

David Eicher: That's interesting. I don't think that that would never fly in the States, I think though.

No, I think it 

Michael Colligan: depends on which state. 

Bill McGeeney: Hmm. 

Michael Colligan: You know, I think that when you're looking at Europe, I mean roughly equivalent to America, they got their different bastions of experimentation. Germany is doing a lot and Austria doing a lot too. I think Germany's the leader in darkness restoration or night preservation studies and implementations.

But I, you know, I'm not sure that we need streetlights, you know, uncertain where we have, at least to the extent which we have them as a person that [00:54:00] studies, it sells lighting every day. I'm actually in my office right now, the counter is right over there where we sell lights. You know, I, I would say, I would wonder whether, rather than streetlights, it's more of a Ballard effect you're looking for.

And so a Ballard is like a four foot high pole, and what it does is it shoots light out and onto the ground in front of you. 

Bill McGeeney: Mm-hmm. 

Michael Colligan: As opposed to shining down from you from above. And that's what headlights do. And so headlights shoot light onto the actual area in which you're driving. And we know that older folks that are not able to drive, when they drive under a bridge and there's bright LED lights, it actually takes them two or three seconds, some elderly, as you get older, it affects people two or three seconds before their eyes will readjust 'cause they're, you know, whatever the rods, cones, what are going wacky.

'cause they went, just went under this super bright light. And so I often wonder myself if driving in from these bright areas into these super dark areas and all these huge transitions that happen [00:55:00] are actually causing more accidents, then they're stopping. And when we're looking at the studies, it's always assumed that more light is better and less light is worse.

And that's an axiomatic presupposition of every study, every legal case, everything that there wasn't enough light there. But I think for now we're starting to see, now I. Overtures towards, was there too much light there? Was that light fixture causing discomfort glare or distraction glare? Was it causing this person to be able to see when they came out of the tunnel on the other side, which is why they smashed into the side of the rail and then smashed into the car next to them.

And so these types of things are starting to be addressed. And so I would applaud that town in, in the UK for trying something different, especially in an area where people don't live or where it's easier to implement. And yeah, so I think the more experimentation, the better. The best one I saw was in France where what they did.

They did a study in a [00:56:00] neighborhood and they put all the lights on advanced lighting controls, which exists. This, this problem is largely solvable. It just needs to be it, and it can be fixed drastically, let's put it that way. Maybe not all the boxes will be checked, but there's a lot of things we can do.

And what they did was they told the residents of the neighborhood that you can download this app on your phone, so if you want to turn the lights on in your neighborhood, you can do that. And the lights trough most of the time. And people didn't complain because they had control over it if they needed it.

And so I think that that goes back to Nadine Becki with, you know, when you're under being bombed by the enemy, you wanna be able to turn on a light after it's all over. I think people want some sense of control over electric light, but if you ask them, do we need to have it on all the time when nobody's there, I, I think that you would have most people say, no, as long as I can control it, I'm okay with that.

So. I think the idea of wasted light at night is, hazardous waste is an interesting concept for this particular application. You know, [00:57:00] if it's wasted then and nobody's there, it's not keeping anybody safe, then turn it off and allow other lighting systems to take over headlights and so on and so forth. So, yeah, I'd, I'd applaud that town in In in, in the uk.

And I'm gonna ask the town manager to come on the Restoring Darkness podcast actually, and talk to me about it. I'm gonna figure it out. 

Nancy Gonlin: There's a quote that I like. It says, we treat light like a drug whose price is spiraling towards zero. And that quote comes from Dirk Hansen, who wrote an article for Nautilus called Drowning in Light in 2014.

And I use that quote in one of my books, co-edit volumes that I've written on the archeology of the night and how we don't necessarily think about. Light as archeologists because we take it for granted and we are constantly lit up wherever we are, whether it's daytime or nighttime. [00:58:00] So that quote has stuck with me.

That light really is like a cheap drug and that we can get it so fast and so easily that we don't consider it to be a drug. 

Bill McGeeney: That's a great quote. I like that, and I think that's where we're gonna end it for this episode. So thank you, Nancy. We'll be back in two weeks with same lineup. Until that time, wanna thank you at home for staying with us this whole time.

I also wanna thank my great guests today, including editor-in-chief of Astronomy Magazine, David Eker. David, for listeners at home, how's best that they find you? There's a. Plenty of places out there where you live. 

David Eicher: There are a number of places. The easiest one though is astronomy.com. That's the magazine brand's website and we have about 1.6 1.7 million people a month who go to that site.

So that is well used and has all the astronomy information you would want and probably too much. 

Nancy Gonlin: Never. Never too much, David. [00:59:00] Not for me. I. Index included, 

Bill McGeeney: I would like. Thank you, Dr. Goland, for coming on today. Where can people learn more about the work you do, Ted talks, your books? 

Nancy Gonlin: I can be contacted with my college email, it's nan dot golin@bellevuecollege.edu.

So that is one place. I also have three co-edited volumes through the University Press of Colorado, and a lot of my media are listed there as well. 

Bill McGeeney: Excellent. And lastly, I. Thank you Mr. Collagen for joining us today. Michael, where can people best reach you? 

Michael Colligan: I think the best place for the people that are interested in this topic is to go to restoring darkness.com, where we interview people in a similar format to this, a little shorter.

I. It's a little bit shorter, as you know, bill from when you were on the show. And it's focused more from the perspective of the lighting industry. And so we're looking [01:00:00] down at the light pollution rather than say dark sky, which does such a great job, you know, preserving our celestial heritage, marking places off as dark sky preserves, working with astronomers and all that, we're more coming up from above it.

And like the map, I think that David mentioned earlier, that we're looking down at the light pollution and saying, you know, gosh, what can we do to fix it? That's restoring darkness.com. And what, what are the problems associated with that light? And how can lighting practitioners get better and better and better in this field?

And so we're gonna be launching educational programs and in September we're gonna launch our first educational program there. And so yeah, we're trying to convince the lighting industry that this is an issue, and if you're interested in that, you go to restoring darkness.com. 

Bill McGeeney: Great. As a reminder, if you heard anything on today's show that it makes you wanna shoot over a comment question, feel free to either text us via the text link in a show notes or send an email to bill@lightpollutionnews.com.

You'll find us online, light pollution news.com. Socials, Instagram, LinkedIn, [01:01:00] TikTok, Facebook, and More. Light Pollution News is a listener supported show, which means you, we take no outside advertising, solely rely on the support of you, the listener. If you like what we do, why not consider helping us this year as we continue our mission of keeping you the listener informed.

Today's show was recorded on May 18th, 2025. I'm your host, bill McGeeney, thanking you for listening today. Remember to only shine the light where it's needed.