Lightspiracy: The Hidden Politics of Modern Lighting with Anna Levin

Was the global ban on incandescent light bulbs really a climate breakthrough — or did we rush into a lighting revolution without fully understanding the biological and environmental consequences?

In this episode, Dave speaks with journalist and author Anna about her book Incandescent and her unexpected journey into the politics and science of modern lighting. What began as a personal health reaction to new “energy-efficient” bulbs became a much deeper investigation into how we regulate light, how we measure it, and how profoundly it shapes human life.

🌞 In This Episode:

• How Anna’s personal experience with CFL lighting sparked a global investigation
• Why incandescent bulbs were labeled “inefficient” — and what that metric ignored
• The limits of measuring light purely in lumens per watt
• How lighting regulations treated bulbs like simple appliances rather than biological influences
• The rise of LED lighting and the explosion of artificial light at night
• The impact of light on circadian rhythms, mood, immunity, and overall health
• The politics and ideology behind the global incandescent phase-out
• Why light pollution is an environmental issue hiding in plain sight
• Whether behavior change (dimming, switching off, reducing overlighting) matters more than bulb type

They explore how lighting policy focused almost entirely on efficiency while overlooking spectrum quality, flicker, environmental impact, and the complex ways light interacts with human biology.

From circadian rhythms and sleep health to the loss of dark skies and its effects on wildlife, this conversation asks a bigger question:

If every living system on Earth evolved under natural cycles of sunlight and darkness, what happens when we radically alter that balance?

Lightspiracy isn’t about nostalgia — it’s about rethinking our relationship with light, energy, and the rhythms that shaped us ☀️

📚 Further Reading

If this episode sparked your curiosity, explore Anna Levin’s powerful books on light, darkness, and our evolving relationship with illumination:

🌞 Incandescent: We Need to Talk About Light
A deeply personal and investigative journey into the global phase-out of incandescent lighting — and what it means for health, environment, and policy.
👉 https://saraband.net/sb-title/incandescent/

🌌 Dark Skies: A Journey into the Night
An exploration of light pollution, the loss of the night sky, and why darkness is essential for both human and ecological wellbeing.
👉 https://saraband.net/sb-title/dark-skies/

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Through conversations with scientists, architects, and technologists, the series examines how natural light shapes our bodies, our buildings, and the way we live indoors.

Hosted by Dave Wallace, Sunlight Matters asks a simple but overlooked question: what happens when we disconnect from the Sun?

Because sunlight isn’t optional. It matters.

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Transcript

Introduction

Anna Levin 0:00

I don't think the ban on incandescent lighting has sol saved energy. I don't think it's contributed to the fight against climate change. And I think it's caused an awful amount of damage hugely to people's lives who can't tolerate the alternative lighting. And at the time of the ban, petitions in Britain from every party promised people with loopers, autistic people, and a whole different groups of people that were really struggling with some of the new forms of lighting, that there would always be incandescent lighting available. Those promises haven't been kept, and that came from every side of the political spectrum. It's not socially acceptable to say, well, you know, might we actually re-examine that ban? There's still no mechanism for somebody to go to the doctor or go to the chemist and say, I actually need this light. So once, you know, once we can't get them online anymore, I don't know how people are going to light their homes, and I don't know how people are going to live their lives. We need to look at light in the context of what we now know about the environment, about, you know, like pollution and the incredible impact that's having, and every, you know, every aspect of human psychology and physiology. And then we need to say what light is best for what circumstances, and how can we best make that when we look at the total environmental impact.

Speaker 1:17

Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun. Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything. Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.

Anna's Journey into Light and Advocacy

Dave Wallace 1:34

Anna, welcome to Sunlight Matters. Uh, I'm really, really thrilled to have this conversation with you. Uh in a moment, I'd love you to kind of give a brief introduction to yourself. But uh I spent Christmas reading your book, Incandescent, uh, and was so taken by it that I thought I should have a chat with you. So um, you know, it's a brilliant book, and here am I sat with this. You'd be pleased to see. And so I just wondered, could you just give an introduction to yourself? And then you, you know, I'm I'm really keen to talk about the book and uh some of the observations that you've made.

Anna Levin 2:18

Sure, yes. Well, I'm a freelance journalist and editor, and was working mostly in environmental journalism and especially wildlife and natural history journalism. And then this strange story of light um crashed into my life, and suddenly I was working on European legislation and physics and all sorts of subjects that felt way out of my depth. Um, and at first I felt you know very audacious, and I thought I can't write about this stuff. But then I came to realise, well, actually, you know, the changes of light affect everyone, and we are all recipients of light, you know, whatever we know or understand about it. So um I just started asking questions, and the more questions I asked, the more I realized how little the people knew that were making decisions. Um, and that's how incandescent came about, really.

Dave Wallace 3:10

Well, I I mean it's it's great, and I mean we'll we'll delve into the light spiracy, as I I think I'm gonna call it in a bit, but um the the book's a very personal one though, because it was sort of your own experiences with lighting that kind of sparked all of this, wasn't it?

The Impact of Light on Health and Environment

Anna Levin 3:28

It was, yeah. And I didn't um as I say, I didn't set out to be a light writer if that's the thing. Um I it's light collided with my life, and I began began to learn more about it. So I felt that all I could do was to chart that journey. Um, you know, I'm not writing as a light scientist or a light expert. I'm writing as a normal person that's been really affected by light and especially by the changes in light and learning more about other people. So all I could really do was write my own story and see if that resonated. And I found that it did. And it felt like it, I think when I when I realized this may be a book rather than just a blog or a rant or something, I keep talking about, I sort of saw that it went out in concentric circles. There was me and my little life in Falkirk, sort of flinching from the street lights and the lights in other people's houses. And then I started, you know, blogging and connecting online and realized there were people all over the world struggling with the new forms of lighting and having way more severe problems than I was with it. And I started to, you know, realize that there was a job in advocacy here to speak for people that couldn't speak from selves, especially people that are digitally excluded and can't actually take part in the digital world because of their light sensitivity and their problems with screens. Um and I was involved in setting up the charity lighterware and started to realize the extent of the problem of a lot of people that were socially excluded and couldn't participate in that discussion. But then I realised it was bigger than that, you know, it was it was affecting the whole built environment, it was and it was affecting everybody's um minds and bodies and souls and retinas and you know whether or not you described yourself as life-sensitive. And then it was quite late in the research, kind of ironically, for someone who's been involved in um you know wildlife and environmental journalism for 20 years, 25 years, it took me a while to actually realise the extent to which this was an environmental story and actually the damage that we're doing to the natural world and to every aspect, you know, from a tree to a bat to an insect to birds, everything is affected by light, and everything is being really damaged by too much light and the wrong light at the wrong time. And so it got bigger and bigger from my little life to other people to a big, a big story of politics and ideology as well, that's not you know not told enough, to realising this was about the natural world, this was about the deep sea, and this was about the sky. And then it's actually, you know, it's about our relationship with with space and time and so it the cosmos, and it got bigger and bigger.

Dave Wallace 6:06

It became about the and then it ended up with Bob Fosbury as well, so uh who we've interviewed on it. But I I I think you know, you've also written a book called Dark Skies, which is is a brilliant read as well. So you you know, my ADHD brain, which has struggled with reading, I have to say, uh, since this turned up, was able to kind of get through incandescent and dark skies because they're so well written. And it's well what what I I really think is is is fantastic is how you you just base it on your own experiences. As you say, you're the pebble which goes into the water and you then have all these concentric circles coming out. And uh, you know, it really I think got me certainly thinking about all of the things that you're kind of talking about. But I think, I mean, just as a starting point, what what when you first noticed problems with light, what were sort of some of the things that you were experiencing?

Anna Levin 7:08

For me personally, um, the problems arose with um with the CFL light bulbs that the the like a c a fluorescent light bulb curled into a a bulb shape um that's that were uh one generation of of the so-called um low-energy lighting. And most of my friends and the places I went, you know, adopted these very fast because we were told they were good and green and incandescent light bulbs were bad and inefficient. And I started realizing that when I went to a friend's house when they had these bulbs, or when I went to worship, um, that I started feeling yeah, really ill. I felt weird, just things I've never felt before, like my head was swelling up and I got dizzy and disorientated, and I couldn't speak properly, I couldn't process my thoughts properly. And at first people said, I can't be the light bulb, you know, that's that's ridiculous. That's just some sort of migraine or some sort of thing. And I went to the doctor um and she said, you know, the the technology is moving faster than the medical research. And what was interesting is she sent me to um Dundee University Hospital, where they had a whole department looking at problems with CFL lighting. Um they were most they were focused on dermatology, and I wasn't actually having skin problems with it. But I thought, I thought at the time, gosh, there's all these, you know, doctors and medics and specialists looking at the problems of this lighting. But we we should have done this research first before these things came onto the market and before we banned the alternatives. Um, so it that that alerted me, I think, to the fact that, okay, this is this is a bigger thing than me. Um and that's when I started asking questions. We asked questions of the doctor that they couldn't answer, I asked questions at the hospital that they couldn't answer. And I realized that, you know, there were physicists that were working on the light, and there were medics that were working on the human bodies, whether that was, you know, neurologists or dermatologists or psychologists, because they were also having a profound effect on people's mood and well-being. Um, but they didn't, nobody seemed to be joining the dots. And the people making the regulations about light and making decisions, you know, what do we ban and what do we keep? They were lumping lights in with kettles and toasters as just an appliance. You know, they weren't dealing with the any aspect of the physiology, and and it didn't, nobody seemed to be seeing the whole picture. And I realized this was because we, you know, we drastically um underestimate light and the power of light and the effect of light on every aspect of life. Um, and people say to me quite no buttons.

Dave Wallace 9:56

I I mean it it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, I I I think back because I can remember those curly bulbs, I remember, you know, the that sense of, oh yeah, incandescents are terrible, this is low energy, these alternatives are low energy. But you know, like like you, I mean, I don't think I I I felt had such a kind of big reaction to you. Well, some of the people you talk, I mean, some people get very sick under light, you know. So but I I I know for myself that certain lights just I'm I mean, I can't tolerate them, you know, I have to turn them off. So and I know like in my family, I'm more sensitive than other members of the family, which is but you know, that that whole sense of light being overlooked, you know, when you actually I mean you can kind of understand why it might have happened because like we're not plants, why would we why why would we ha have any kind of interaction with light? And then then you sort of abstract yourself, stand back, look at the big picture and go, well, of course we're impacted by light because we spent most of our our evolution under light and light conditions, and you know, of course we had this incredible relationship with light. So the the fact that kind of modern modern ways of thinking kind of has sort of taken that and said, well, it doesn't really matter, is actually quite a big puzzle, isn't it?

Understanding Light: Science and Sensitivity

Anna Levin 11:32

It is a huge and it's a huge part of the puzzle that I think people when they when we think about health and well-being, you know, we tend to think about exercise and sleep and stress levels, diet relentlessly, you know, and amount of fluids you're taking. And light hasn't been enough. I think it's coming now, and people there is a bit more awareness. But actually the need, you know, the need for daylight, the need for sunlight, um, and so it's like the positive effects of light as well as the you know the negative effects of of some other forms of lighting that um that affect everyone. You know, people say, Oh, yeah, what is this weird condition you've got? And and you know, is is it contagious and is it hereditary? And and I say, well, you know, um I I don't have a condition, I'm just a bit more sensitive to light uh and to certain aspects of light. And that's that's one of the things that makes it so complicated, is that um you know there isn't a thing called light sensitivity. You know, some people um are very much affected by flicker more than others. Some people are affected by the glare, some people are affected by the intensity. Um, some people, as I say, have have skin problems and quite severe um you know dermatology issues from where you know light interacts. Because light interacts with every bit of us. It's not it's not one and it's not one thing. And I think um, as I say, on that on the journey to incandescent, you I did take myself off um and have some physics lessons for complete beginners with a um a Cambridge physicist. And um and yeah, I bought pints and he get went right back to basics because I I hadn't even done the basics at school. And the I think the two most important things I learnt um A was that it's complicated. You know, light is a multifaceted mystery, really, so we cannot reduce it to lumens per watt. We can't, any measurement that you take, you're missing something else out. So you've got to really, if you're making regulations about light, you've got to be really aware about um who you know what you're measuring and what you're not measuring and who that impacts, because um, you know, lumens per watt is a pure purely human concept, but the light that we put into our towns and cities and gardens, that's affecting you know every tree, every plant, every insect, every bat, you know, um what kind of light and what aspects of light are the most have the most impact on them? And it's you know it's going to vary a lot. So we can't take one measurement and say that's light. Um and the other thing I learned that really surprised me is that you know it it is a mystery right up to that Cambridge University physics level. You know, there is only so much we understand about light, and that um and that this was the complete mind boggle of my life. He said to me that you know what the way we talk about light is metaphors. You know, we're using metaphors, all this stuff about, you know, whether waves and particles. It's not either, it's that they're just wet metaphors to help us think about it and the way it behaves. And that was like, up till that moment, I thought, you know, scientists knew stuff and they had the facts, and righty arti people like me did the metaphors. Um and then I realized, you know, there it we are just all trying to find ways of understanding. Um and so you've got this really complicated, mysterious phenomena that we're still learning about, and you know, sort of the recent revelations. Um, you realize, you know, what else don't we know? What don't we know about it? And then you've got bodies, which are in, you know, and minds and human beings and life forms, which are incredibly complex, multifaceted things as well. So you know the interactions between those two are so um so complicated and so amazing and so underestimated when you you cannot regulate like like you re regulate a toaster.

The Relationship Between Light, Darkness, and Wellbeing

Dave Wallace 15:30

Um I mean, and it's it's so true, isn't it? Like, and it's all so intricate. Like you, you know, I guess it's what one of the things that is incredible is actually that intricacy. We can't even, as you say, we haven't got the words, we haven't even got the the paradigm within physics or biology to really kind of uh be able to kind of fully comprehend all of this stuff. But you know, life from its earliest beginning was having to deal with light changes in light, you know. So I think it's Luca, which was the first life form, it had to deal with light and darkness, basically. And you know, so our relationship is so kind of built into us, it's such an amazing thing that we haven't stepped back and gone, oh my god, what we what are we doing?

Anna Levin 16:23

You know, and it's been the one it's been the one constant through evolution. Yeah, we've got this changing climate, we've got changing land masses, we've got, you know, changing seasons. But you know, light and dark has been the constant that that's been the beat that everything on earth, all life on earth has, you know, has evolved to live with. And um, and you know it's in very, very short space of time that we've utterly messed with that. And we don't really understand the consequences, but we've also utterly underestimated that. We sort of think, oh, we've got electric light now, we don't need to worry about that stuff, we don't need to worry about dark and light, and and then we're finding, oh, actually, actually we do. You know, this is this is really fundamental. And I think people, you know, there's been a lot of talk on on body clocks and circadian rhythms in recent years, but I think people still think of that as just being about sleeping and waking, and they don't think about how you know every system in your body is is circadian and trained, and it affects your blood sugar and it affects your cell and you affects your immune system, and and it affects your mood and your you know your your psychology and your capacity in all sorts of ways. And when we start to, you know, work with light that works for us, you can I think it's you know really important when we're talking about the problems of light and the technical term shite lights I use for a wide range of what we currently have to encounter.

Dave Wallace 17:47

I've got a shite light here, so we'll uh we'll do an unboxing of this because I bought it thinking it was a nice light, but it's a shite.

Anna Levin 17:55

I think we should I think we should have a sort of awards for the shite light of the um but yeah, I think it's also really important to you know talk about the positive effects of you know of good light and of sunlight and of natural light um and of darkness because you know every time that we're talking about light, we're also talking about darkness. And you and every time we talk about darkness, we're talking about light, and the whole issue is the balance between the two. And I think we're um yeah, the book's dark skies, it's about celebrating darkness, but on the the beauty of the light that's in the sky, the natural light, um, and you know, we've got the stars, we've got the moon, we've got the you know, views of the Milky Way, we've got the aurora, we've got an amazing amount of light going on up there. So sometimes I think dark skies is a bit of a misnomer, um, because you know, those are all part of being human as well, you know, our relationship to light and dark, but it's also our relationship to the night sky. And that's been setting humans dreaming and wondering. And, you know, we've built myths and stories around that night sky as long as we've been human. And if you've got generations now growing up in cities that have never seen the night sky, you've got to think about how that's actually affecting them. Some psychologists talk about an awe deficit, you know, this lack of the wonder and the wow. That maybe we actually need to contemplate something that's bigger than ourselves.

Dave Wallace 19:24

If you're enjoying Sunlight Matters, make sure to subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform. You can also search Sunlight Matters on Google to find more episodes, guest information, and further insights about sunlight analysis, solar exposure, and the way light shapes our spaces. But I I think this is you know one of the things I've ri really started thinking about is I think light and darkness becomes a way of understanding how disconnected we are from our origins and nature itself. And I think, you know, one of the reasons I'm so passionate about the whole topic of sunlight is you know, getting out into sunlight probably means getting out into nature, appreciating you know, this awesome thing, which um, you know, as long as you're sensible, fills you with vitality, and uh and you you know, it it's opened my eyes, reopened my eyes to th you know. So I I think I was telling you before about kind of I saw some research on green light, and you know, sitting on sitting under a tree is an analgesic, you know, the green light of a of a hot summer's day. And who doesn't love to sit under a tree on a hot summer's day and feel the coolness of the but it turns out that that that feeling is a real thing. I mean, it's like I went to Nice on holiday and was sort of found myself eventually a little spot on the beach. You know, there was thousands of people on the and I was like, why do humans feel so this need to get in the sun and down by the sea? And it's like if you really think about it, why do we because it's very crowded, I mean, but there we all were enjoying ourselves, and it's because of the sun and the sea. And it's like if we listen to ourselves, I think we'd know what we've got to kind of do. And what what I love about what you did is you you listened to yourself and then went, oh, there is something wrong, and then you kind of went on this voyage of investigation and and then wrote about it. And I think it's a it's a fantastic thing that you kind of gave yourself permission to go, well, this is really odd, you know. Whereas I think a lot of us we just sort of spend our lives going, I feel crack, I feel, you know, under par, and not really kind of delving into the hows and whys, you know. And I think if you give yourself permission around, Light bulbs, then you, as you say, you start thinking about darkness. So I crave darkness as well. And I was like, that's kind of a weird thing, isn't it? Because surely we live in a society where we all want more light, don't we?

The Impact of Light on Human Rights and Well-being

Anna Levin 22:15

I think, yeah, I think we're as a society, we're bizarrely tolerant of shite lights. You know, I think if you went, if you went into a cafe that had a bad smell, you probably wouldn't stay, you know, or if there was a really, really annoying annoying noise, or that you'd think of my staying for a meal here, you you might leave. But very few people would leave because the light's awful, even if they don't like it. And I think, you know, in workplaces, so many people say, Oh, I get a headache at work. And they think that's just something they have to tolerate. Um, and you shouldn't have to tolerate it. You know, you shouldn't be affected by the environment that it causes you pain or causes you irritation or just makes you feel icky, you know, just that really uncomfortable feeling. And I think, you know, people say, Oh, wouldn't it be great if you know we had something on our phones that you know some people can't, you know, do use their phones to measure aspects of light, or some gadget that you could say, what you know, what's going on here, what's the flicker, what's the glare. But I always think, well, we we do have this amazing um gadget that's you know been in nature's research and development for millions of years. You know, that's our own body and mind. And if we actually listen to it, you know, you know when the light isn't right. And you also know when it is. You know, when you go into a restaurant or and there's little lights and there's candles on the table, and you just get that, oh, this is nice. You know, if you go into someone's house, sometimes you walk in, you say, oh, this is this feels good. And I think we need to listen to those more. You know, there's issues for people that are, you know, so light sensitive that we call, you know, we use the phrase light disabled and actually not able to participate in society and not able to, you know, use public transport, get to the doctor, go to a dentist, do all you know, have education, all these things are becoming um inaccessible to people that are struggling with, especially with the bright LED lighting. Um, but the so there's you know there's profound human rights issues for people for people who can't tolerate LED lighting, but there's also profound um everyone issues for just not feeling great in a in a work environment, in a school environment, in a in a in even in your own home, because a lot of people aren't light literate enough to have a clue what all the numbers on the light bulb boxes mean, or what it's you know, what it's all about, because there's so many changes and measures. Um and just being more um alert to if your body or mind tells you this this light isn't good, that is what that is what you need to know. And I think you know what's coming out now with some of the really interesting science from people that have been on your podcast before, is that things that we know experientially, you know, sitting under a tree feels good. You know, there's science coming out that's actually explaining why. Um which backs you up, but we kind of know it knew it already. You know, we just have to listen to that.

Dave Wallace 25:11

I I I I I absolutely I absolutely I mean I think it is a real lesson, and we probably all know what, or many of us know what's going on. We just have to kind of shut out some of the modern voices around us. So but I I I'm I'm one of the things in your book, sort of touching on the light spiracy stuff, which is fascinating, is just how quickly incandescents were kind of vilified. You know, uh how you know, this wasn't just in you know, sort of certain countries. I mean, it's a global phenomenon that we've moved to this sort of low energy thing. I think in some countries you can be arrested if you have incandescent bulbs and things. I mean, it it's not quite that bad here, but I think you know, in the US they're going to be fully outlawed very soon. In the UK, you I mean nobody can make them anymore, can they? So the manufacture of incandescence has gone out the wind. I and you you know, I mean, I deal a lot with the water industry, and that's in the UK is in a terrible state, and basically it's in a terrible state because you start following the money and you see that you, you know, lots of people have made a lot of money out of uh the situation with it. I couldn't quite see the money training the the light side of things in quite the same way. So how did this whole thing, the how did it happen? I mean, it it's sort of it it's it's a quite an odd thing, isn't it?

The Environmental and Health Implications of Lighting Choices

The Psychological and Ideological Battle Over Lighting

Reassessing the Ban on Incandescent Bulbs

Anna Levin 26:40

It it is a bizarre story, and sometimes I still think, you know, how has this happened in my lifetime? Um it's it went round the world very, very fast, the ban on incandescent lighting. And I think people you're partly with good intentions, it was driven a lot by Green Movement, you know, desperate to do something about the reality of climate change and to get our emissions down by getting our electricity use down, they looked at one measure. Um, and when the whole concept of you know energy efficient lighting or low energy lighting looks at you know the amount of light that comes out of a light bulb at the point where you switch it on and the amount of energy that it takes to run that. It doesn't look at the materials, it doesn't look at the manufacturing, it doesn't look at the transportation, it doesn't look at the recycling or you know, the processing after the use of that bulb. And it doesn't look at the quality of the light, it doesn't look at any, there was no um, you know, environmental risk assessment, there was no human health risk assessment, um, and there was no understanding of you know the effect of that quality of light on human life or the environment. So we took one tiny measure and made global regulation about that, um, which seems incredible. And even at the time, you know, there was leading dermatologists and ophthalmologists warning against this and talking about incandescent as biologically harmonious lighting. Um, and this was, you know, even before LEDs, this was you know, banning them so that everyone had to change to CFLs, which contained mercury, which you know had another environmental impact. That wasn't taken into consideration. But what happened was was a um a power tool of language that was really used. You know, if every time you say the word incandescent, you say inefficient, you get this inefficient, incandescent, inefficient, incandescent. And when you hear the words incandescent, you think, oh, they're inefficient. And they talked about um, you know, incandescent light bulbs going extinct as if this was some natural process, but actually it was a political decision. Um and the weird thing happened with consensus, really. I think it was, you know, it was about psychology as much as about business and money that um this was accepted and this became the consensus. And it was sort of one thing you could do. It was you could change your light bulbs. You know, everyone's you know, rightly desperate to do something about the really dire predicament that the world is in. And that felt like, oh good, I can change my light bulbs, I'm doing something good. Um, so that became good. Incandescent light bulbs became bad. And, you know, at the time Greenpeace in in Germany actually sort of drove a um, you know, smashed like 10,000 light incandescent light bulbs, saying they're so dangerously inefficient that it's better to smash them than use them. It's like it became as if um you know the CO2 was coming directly from these light bulbs. Like that was a dangerous product in itself. And actually it was quite an innocuous product compared to what we've replaced it with in terms of the materials and the processes. Um and a lighting designer at the time, Howard Branston in in the States, he did a big study and he felt found that you know the same amount of energy could have been saved by dimmer switches, and of course putting the lights off, you know, because a lot of the energy use around lighting depends on how you use it. Um so actually using less could use less energy, and we've gone the opposite way. We've we've got you know we've gone to LED light bulbs, which we are told are good and cheap, so we've put them everywhere. You know, we've we've got a lot more light than we had. So consensus became I I had this weird sense when I was working on the book, and when I was talking to people, um, you know, and I work in environmental journalism, and most of my friends are pretty green, and everyone, you know, I got a really weird reaction from people when I started challenging this consensus on light bulbs, because my previous book had been about otters, and I felt like when I talked about otters or dolphins and whales, I'm very interested in marine mammals and the the health of the watery environment, you know, like yourself, people would, you know, lean forward and you could see the sparkle in the eyes and they'd be all engaged. And when I talked about light bulbs, you'd get this repulsion. Um and people really didn't want to know. And I realized it was quite affronting because they'd change their light bulbs and they'd been good and green. And if you if you unpick that, you're really threatening someone's sense of of what they're doing. Um, but I think I realized it was something much deeper than that, um, which is that light bulbs had got tangled in ideology, and there was this sort of ideological veil, a bit like light pollution sort of separates us from the stars. There was this ideology that had just blurred the conversation so people couldn't really see what you were talking about. It was just that, you know, Donald Trump doesn't want incandescent light bulbs banned. I don't want incandescent light bulbs banned. Therefore, I'm uh in the same camp. And and you didn't. Yes, which you know, I'm not and and you know, a lot of the American right was against um banning light bulbs for the same reason they're against banning guns. You know, it's not up for government to tell us what to do. Um and it it became distorted. And in in Britain, um, it was the Brexit um movement that was against the banks. They didn't want Europe telling us what to do. Brussels can't say what light bulbs they use. And you know, a lot of people didn't like the CFL light bulbs because they were shite lights, you know, they um they cast a really ugly pallor and they took a while to light up and they made things look gloomy and deathly, and people didn't like them. So people who didn't who wanted to not like them were, you know, didn't want to be told what to do to be said that they had to. So it became a a a right wing, left wing sort of divide, and it became um, there's also people that were like climate change deniers that were saying, oh, you know, this isn't this isn't true. So it it became tangled up with all these different ways of thinking and all these different ways of, you know, political um ideologies. So when you started talking about it, you found people were taking sides, and suddenly I I seemed to have shifted to some other side, which I hadn't, because I was talking about light, I was talking about neurology, I was talking about physics, which doesn't care about any of these ideologies, but it got so tangled in it. And I don't think that's gone away. You know, I think incandescent lighting, there's a kind of taboo about it. You know, there's a lot of talking about light, you know, there's a lot of conversations, and even the people that are really seeing some of the problems that we've brought in and some of the problems inherent in um fluorescent lighting and in LED lighting, there's still the consensus and the accepted thing to say is that oh, we need to make LEDs better and we keep needing to make LEDs better. There isn't a conversation about actually, did we have pretty decent lights to start with? And you know, could we change our behaviour so that we use less um electricity, use less energy for them? And can we look at how we make the energy, not how we use it, because that's actually the climate change causer. Um so there was a lot of protests, I can't actually remember if it was um Iceland, I think it was, but where you know most of the energy was was made from renewable sources, excuse me. And and they were saying, well, the the calculations of you know however million tons of CO2 used by light bulbs, it it's not the light bulbs that are making the CO2, it's actually the source of energy. So the conversation had got so why do we have to? So I think we need to we need to start again. We need to look at light in the context of what we now know about the environment, about you know, like pollution and the incredible impact that's having, and every, you know, every aspect of human psychology and physiology, and then we need to say what light is best for what circumstances, and how can we best make that when we look at the total environmental impact, when we look at you know the manufacturing and the recycling and everything involved. And then, you know, we may well find if we actually put those questions and look at those metrics that we're better off with what we had. And but nobody's saying that because it's like it's a taboo word.

Dave Wallace 35:33

But I mean you're but I I I think it's I I think your analysis is totally spot on. I mean, one just picking up on one thing you said is you know, we've moved to low energy, but then we've got vastly more lights now than we ever had before. I mean, yeah, I was just as you were talking, I was thinking about that dome thing in Las Vegas. I mean, that that must have so many LEDs that you know that the the the light from that, you know, I mean, it it's beyond kind of imagination in terms of of that. But I mean, that's what we've done is we've kind of built these things. We've got screens, we've got all of this stuff everywhere which didn't exist before.

Anna Levin 36:15

And the and the ban was all about using energy. So it's like I remember just even walking down the street in Edinburgh that Christmas thinking, hang on, we've banned incandescent light bulbs, which you know I might want to use in a little bedside light to read a bit before I go to bed. But there's no restrictions on energy using to light half the city with like, you know, 20,000 LED, or isn't it pretty Christmas lights? And it's like that it doesn't actually make sense. Um, you know, and also you know, we banned incandescent light bulbs for the crime of making heat, but there's no there's no legal restrictions on how we can wildly overheat, you know, our houses or our schools or our hospitals. So we're using energy for all of that. So the the actual um you know thinking behind the ban doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

Dave Wallace 37:03

But it's being corrupted. I I think you're right though, in terms of taking a much more holistic view at all of this. Because, you know, I was looking at GE, have done a nice little video on, you know, the difference between old bulbs and I was looking at, and it's like the say talks about the savings and how long term they are. You know, but then I was thinking about the conversation I had with Glenn Jeffrey about you know the the metabolic impact of kind of modern lighting and not getting outside in the sun a lot. You know, the cost of that, I mean, the human cost is massive, but if you wrap around the human cost, the environmental costs of people being long-term ill and the medication, and you know, so if you kind of start thinking about it in the biggest picture way, you go, well, actually, you know, for the sake of manufacturing a few of these, because he, you know, what he's saying is like you just need a couple of uh incandescent bulbs around to give you that a bit of a boost, and you you know, his advice is obviously get outside at least 20 to 30 minutes every day. Um but that needs to be part of the story, and I I I sort of I think light bulbs are a bit like recycling, you know. So if you dig into recycling, you discover that you know that's a bit bit of a that we're doing our bit for the environment. I kind of like feel like light bulbs have given us all a bit of control over something, but you know, that's been sold to us by I whatever, the politicians, the green movement, which you know, and I'm I I absolutely believe that we should be doing everything we can to kind of minimize our energy use. So I don't it's not said it, but there's lots of co-opting gone into all of this, and as you say, it's been turned into kind of like a massive marketing gimmick for you know saving the world. And I'm like, well, it's total BS actually.

The Broader Implications of Lighting on Society and Environment

Anna Levin 39:13

If you kind of I think I got the sense that when people say to me, like, what's incandescent about, or um, you know, say, well, yeah, it's about like bulbs to some extent, but actually it's about consensus. And that, you know, the story, most of all, um, is about I got this sense like consensus had a sort of texture, like a a sort of gloopy, sticky stuff, and you can't you punch a hole in it and it fills in, and it's and it's built. You can actually have something that isn't true, but you build and build and build this consensus on it, so that actually if you take away the thing that it was built on, it doesn't move because the consensus is so um impenetrable. And that's what I feel like the little boy in the Emperor's New Clothes sometimes saying, but um, but is it low energy? But did it make sense? Was a everyone seems to have accepted that. And I think you know, because I am just a freelance writer, I'm not involved in any lighting industry, I'm not involved in any political party, I'm not, I I can say this this word incandescent. Yeah, people people even that um you know a lot about light and talk a lot of sense, it seems to be it's not it's not socially acceptable to say, well, you know, might we actually re-examine that ban? Um, and was that actually the right thing to do? It's still how how can we get LED lighting as close as we can to the light that came out of those? And how can we contor them? How can we develop them? Um, but that isn't part of the dialogue, and I think that is, you know, nothing to do with physics or manufacturing or human health. That is because of this um, this weird taboo that we've put over something because it's too big a thing to say, you know, we really cocked up there. That was a big mistake. Um, and I don't think the ban on incandescent lighting has sol saved energy. I don't think it's contributed to the fight against climate change, and I think it's caused an awful amount of damage. I think it's caused damage hugely to people's lives who can't tolerate the alternative lighting. And at the time of the ban, you know, politicians in Britain from every party promised people with loopers, people, autistic people, a whole different groups of people that were really struggling with some of the new forms of lighting, that there would always be incandescent lighting available. That hasn't, those promises haven't been kept, and that came from every side of the political spectrum. So it was acknowledged even then that some people would not be able to light their homes and live their lives without this lighting. That's just a bit been forgotten. You know, lighterware has ensured that it's been written into um European legislation that people need incandescent light bulbs, and that's now been brought into UK legislation, but there's still no mechanism for somebody to go to the doctor or go to the com chemist and say, I actually need this light. So once, you know, once we can't get them online anymore, I don't know how people are going to light their homes, and I don't know how people are going to live their lives. Um but yeah, nobody's saying, you know, what what did it achieve? It's it's this sense that this is evolution and it's it's not, it's just technology racing ahead of research and understanding.

Dave Wallace 42:39

Yeah, I mean it really is quite a metaphor for modern life, to be honest with you, I think. And it's more than a metaphor, obviously, but uh I mean you could apply that thinking to so much of what we're surrounded by in terms of you know, I I mean my favorite law is the law of unforeseen consequences, and you know, you really got to be careful about what you wish for. So, um well, listen, thank you so much. I mean, one thing I wanted to show you, just get your reaction, is I bought this as an incandescent bulb, and I think you'll see that that's clearly not an incandescent bulb.

Anna Levin 43:14

It's not an incandescent ball. No, it's pretending to be an incandescent bulb.

Dave Wallace 43:17

It's pretending, which makes it I mean, I and to be clear, like incandescence, they are generating light from heat, and it that seems to be the kind of key thing. So it's broad spectrum light, whereas LEDs by definition is very narrow spectrum, and you know, even if LEDs they sort of start filling in all the gaps, they're not the way it produces light, you're still gonna have sort of bands missing, aren't you? And it could be the missing things which you know nobody knows could be the things which are really important.

Anna Levin 43:54

So I think that's what's really coming out now, because there was a lot of concern about blue light and the effects of certain Wavelengths, but now we're we're look starting to understand the effects of what isn't there and the you know the emissions of of light. So and it just comes back to this um you know this question of what what are we trying to achieve when when we're engineering and engineering and manufacturing and designing and trying still trying to reach towards this perfect light. Um I think we possibly had it. And actually an incandescent light used sparingly with a dimmer switch is not the um you know the environmental demon that it's been described as.

Dave Wallace 44:39

No, no, no, I agree. I mean, and then there is also um you wrote this book as well, which is a great phone because that's the other thing is to, you know, make sure you get outside a lot. Um have a dog. Have a dog, that's the plan. Like dogs are very good. Absolutely. Um I think the the you know, I mean one thing I I've really, you know, going back to kind of noticing the difference about, you know, I've been like last year, as I was sort of getting my head around all of this stuff, I was getting up earlier and earlier with the dogs to get them out, and that just became the most fantastic time for me is that those few hours in the morning before everybody else is up, um out in the countryside. So, you know, getting outside I think is is kind of critical as well. So I love the fact that you've written about incandescence, about dark skies, but also about dogs as well, because I think if you kind of join all of those things together, you've kind of got a recipe for health.

Anna Levin 45:49

Absolutely. And actually, the first one of the first books I w worked on was a book about otters returning to UK waters with a fantastic wildlife photographer, Lori Campbell, who'd been documenting the otters coming back to his home river on the Tweed. And they'd disappear. He grew up there, had never seen otters because they'd disappeared. Um, and people think, you know, they disappeared because they were hunted, but actually it was the pesticides that were um put on the crops that washed into the rivers and they built up in the food chain, and you know, we pretty much wiped out otters from most of Britain. Um and then I went off and wrote this book about light bulbs, and I realized it's you know, to some extent it's the same story because it is those unforeseen consequences, and it's not looking at the big picture. They put that stuff on the crops because they were looking at one yield of you know, one type of thing, and they weren't looking at the it's this you know, risk assessment, it's the it's the precautionary principle, it's it's looking at the total environmental impact of things. Um, and and that had you know um incredible impacts on on every aspect of life in our rivers. Um, but that wasn't what they no, but they weren't trying to um you know kill off the otters or all the other bits of the food chain before otters, but they didn't think it through. And I think you know, we've done a similar thing with light. We've you know, we've let the technology or the inventions of, oh yeah, we can fix this thing, but we actually cause an awful lot of trouble. And I think, you know, in this era of energy efficient lighting, we've had a massive increase in light pollution. And light pollution affects those rivers, you know, it affects the us as it affects every aspect of light on life on earth, because we think, oh well, light, these lights are good and they're cheap, therefore we can put them everywhere. And it's a real headshift to think. Light at night is pollution, you know, artificial light. And if you have uh, you know, pretty lights by your pond, if you have outdoor lighting of your house, security, that you're actually polluting the environment. And it's the kind of headshift that's made you know a single-use plastic bottle a lot more less socially acceptable, I think needs to come to light that you know, if you if you were at somebody's house and they left the tap on and walked through to another room, you'd be like, um, excuse me. But if they leave a light on, that's totally normal. But it's actually, you know, how how we use light and how we over light, that is the energy issue. Um, and also, you know, light pollution is a vast amount of wasted light. You know, we don't need to light our churches all night, we don't need to light our shops all night so people can, you know, look in. We don't need to light the streets to the extent that we do. And we certainly don't need to, you know, leave security light of that, you know, brightness on houses all night. So when you walk around, um, I mean, I live in central Scotland, I look sort of across to Stirling, across the Central Plain, and you know, it is dazzlingly bright when I look from my house at night. And you know, that that is the environmental crime. You know, not a not an incandescent light bulb in my bedside lamp.

Dave Wallace 48:59

Fantastic. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a really lovely conversation. Uh, and uh your book, I'll put some links to your books so people can buy them should they wish to read them, and I would highly, highly recommend that people do. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Sunlight Matters, brought to you by Shadow Man, where we explore how sunlight influences the way we build, design, and live each day. If you like what you heard today, be sure to subscribe, follow, and leave a review on your preferred streaming platform. You can also search Sunlight Matters on Google to find all our episodes, guest information and resources about sunlight analysis, solar exposure, and the best home orientation for natural light. You can also head over to shadowmap.org where you can download our iOS app for free today to visualize how sun is currently impacting your life. We appreciate you being part of the conversation, and we'll see you next time, where you can keep exploring the world through the lens of light.