Canberra - we have a serious light pollution problem. And it's costing us all...

ANU's big dish is a much favoured location for politicians
launching big environmental promises that often don't go anywhere...
Photo: The Australian

An amazing body of work was released today by the ACT Greens' Shane Rattenbury. It's a "Report Card" on the ALP Government's performance in meeting the promises they made in 2007 through their Weathering the Change climate change action plan.

I was there in 2007 representing the Gungahlin Community Council when John Stanhope launched this new action plan in the shadow of ANU's big dish solar concentrator. I was pleased to see a number of the initiatives in the plan, but as always, the delivery is more important than the promises.

So it's good to see the ACT Greens have done this work to hold the ALP to account. The ALP - through Environment Minister Simon Corbell - continue to make grand promises about greenhouse reduction targets, but what has their delivery been like to date? According to the Greens' report card, not too well, despite some good intentions and some action.

And what of my pet hate of streetlights lighting the sky?

ALP Promise #13:

Undertake energy efficient street light replacement.

Greens Assessment:

• 1713 lights replaced in 2007
• 5600 installed through 2008-09 budget
• LED trials underway
• future roll-out plans unclear.

Hmm ... not much chop...

To which I'd add criticism of the woeful controls on the Land Development Agency - wilfully rolling out new streetlights 10 to the dozen that all have protruding luminaires, thereby ensuring that we all will be locked in for decades of paying for maybe 30% of the electricity to go straight up into the sky!

Surely the first step in fixing a problem is to stop making it worse??

Can anyone explain to me why we feel a need to ensure our streetlights are visible from the top of Mt Ainslie or Mt Stromlo? Do we have to make the postcard photos look prettier or something?

And what is the result?

• Wasted electricity (read: tax dollars).
• Higher electricity costs due to need for unnecessarily unpgraded infrastructure.
• Degraded nightime amenity if you happen to live in the way of these lights on steroids (our place is lit up so bad it's like heavily clouded day at night time).
• A generation of people growing up without seeing the wonder that is the Milky Way.
• A Canberra brain drain as astronomy researchers have to go elsewhere because of the local light pollution - and possibly loss of industry like the EOS space junk laser ranging observatory.
• Oh - and the completely avoidable greenhouse impact from electricity that didn't need to be used.

Streetlights don't have to spill light upwards

I don't think many people would be surprised this is a pet hate of mine. The lights are so bad in our newer suburbs that we have to drive miles out of town to get even reasonable telescope viewing.

The solution is simple: mandate that all lighting in new estates has recessed luminares, thereby ensuring that all light generated goes downwards. Zero loss of "safety". The LDA and private developers don't have to foot the operational costs for this stuff - so it has to come from TAMS in the way of improved asset design requirements.