Hello again from the Virtual Lighting Design community, where today we unpack the impact of light on our environment, health and communities a little bit more. In this episode we expand on the thought-provoking insights shared by Maria Dotton, senior Associate at HLB Lighting Design, as she addresses the critical issues of light pollution versus light poverty. Maria's earlier presentation sparked conversations around the effects of sky glow, glare and light trespass. If you haven't heard Maria's earlier presentation, please do go back and listen to that. It's well worth a listen right to the end. In this post-presentation Q&A session, co-founder of the virtual lighting design community, ingmar Klarsen joins the conversation. Before we head into today's episode, a quick thank you to our bespoke supporters conversation. Before we head into today's episode, a quick thank you to our bespoke supporters aero hospitality lighting, creative lighting, asia, erico, the signify lighting academy and philips lighting. Do also check out our online community, vldcommunity.

Here's the conversation with maria and ingmar clarson Klassen. Thank you so much, marie. That was a very fascinating presentation. We've actually had a number of different people talk about dark skies on the VLD community, but it was really inspiring to hear you actually define both extremes of light you know, having too much and also not having enough and it was really interesting to hear also about what that effect in one city can have on another city 200 kilometres away, and also bringing attention to Article. Was it 2.5, the Universal Declaration, 25. 25, sorry, the Universal.

Declaration.

And I found it interesting to hear that because you were almost talking about it from a good governance point of view, which I think is a little bit different to what others have talked to. So then you're actually tackling that issue not just, you know, on a local scale or just individualizing it, but we all have a part to play in it, also at a governmental level. Absolutely, would you say. There's a bit of a. I think you mentioned at the end about how important it is to have balance. One can quickly become the other extreme.

Oh, yes, yes yeah, how would you say that it is best done to to avoid the the risk of that happening?

I think. Well, everybody will say this, but education is a big part of it, but not necessarily education on a local or a personal level, right, we can certainly educate all of our students, all of our lighting designers, even our architects, but I think it has to be an education at a governmental level, right, because the governments are the ones that are setting the rules, they are the ones that are in charge of creating these guidelines, and they may reach out to us for input, but at the end of the day, they're the ones that are putting this out there, right? So, to give you an example, in New York City a while ago there was a change in the regulation, right, they wanted to go into LEDs and they decided that 4000K was the best color temperature to go with. And all lighting designers, of course, raised their hands and said hey, wait a minute, this may not be the most the best approach. Yes, sure, you can have 4000K for better visual acuity in the streets, but New York City being such a populated city, acuity in the streets, but New York City being such a populated city, then you will have this bright blue light coming out of the streets and entering people's houses, and this may not be the healthiest approach yet.

So even when governments have good intentions and they get into this whole idea of, well, let's reduce carbon emissions, right, let's go with energy savings, there may still be a need for us to get involved in those conversations and bring the knowledge that we have to make sure that whatever regulations, whatever guidelines are set for cities and communities and neighborhoods, they will be the best. Yet and that's where I think our input needs to go to right, because this presentation, as you said, it deals with it on a much of a social level than it is a technical or a scientific level. It does take the science into the presentation to explain the point, but it is. We are talking about a social problem here. It's not just an environmental issue, it is a social problem that we're starting to see. So, definitely, going back to your question, we need to get ourselves involved in the creation of regulation and the creation of guidelines and make sure that we are informing the people that are making the decision so that the decisions that are made are the best possible.

Yeah, thank you for that answer. That actually brings me to another point that you made about this. I think it had to do with the Bordeaux measurement that you showed and whether to mitigate or to preserve. That is more focused on how to preserve the dark sky, but how would that tie into the light poverty side of things, where that approach might not work the same?

Well, so the reason why I showed the scale is it's really because this presentation initially was done for a group of people here in the Middle East. As you know, here in the Middle East there has been a lot of work into developing areas that had never been developed before. If we are going into these areas, it means that we're going to introduce lighting into the environment. So obviously we need to understand certainly where we are right. Most likely these areas are going to have a perfect, pristine night sky, so what can we do to preserve that as much as possible and not introduce light pollution into the environment in a way that it will not just affect that area, as I said before, but it may affect many areas around it? Right, but in terms of light, sorry, in terms of light poverty, where I think the scale is going to help us quite a lot is that, as you also saw, I'm not just classifying light poverty as an area that has no lighting, but I'm also trying to bring attention to areas where there is lighting. It's just not the right kind of lighting, right? I'm going to make a small break here.

You know, when people talk about poverty, we tend to think of people that lack something. Completely right. But if you think about it clearly, poverty is also a situation when you have low quality of something, for example, somebody that is poor of health. It doesn't mean that they have no health at all. It means that health is not the thinking that even in inner cities, where there's plenty of light for everyone to go around, we can still have a situation of light poverty just by introducing a low-quality lighting system into the environment. Right, and so this is also where the Bortles scale can help Cities that are very, very polluted. Maybe they need to be re-looked at, because it may be that in certain areas, the situation is that we're incorporating lighting that is not adequate for the neighborhoods, and this is at the same time causing two problems light poverty and light pollution at the same time.

Yeah, thank you for that. That's a really nice distinction to make because it's often overlooked and sometimes it can get a little bit confusing. On the different things, we actually had our own personal experience here in Western Australia. I loved how you showed before about the effect of poor lighting on the environment from the different animals turtles breeding and the predatory and migratory patterns.

We had a project in the northwest of Western Australia which was a hotel which was right on the beach, not a huge hotel, but it happened to be located directly opposite a turtle breeding beach, so all the lighting that there was. That was a very interesting one because we also had the environmental people and you know it was quite tightly regulated about what we could do to not disturb the breeding patterns of the turtles on that beach. So all the quality of light ended up being a really important part of it. Also controlling the light. So there wasn't that tresp, like you said, the the pollution and the trespass from having that amber type of lighting, using low bowlers, having indirect light type of lighting and and really controlling where that and at the same time, not having that affect the social and cultural aspect of the hotel, because it still needs to be a place where people go and, you know, visit and enjoy themselves.

And people need to feel safe and comfortable, right? Exactly, and that comes back to the idea that darkness is not a comfortable environment. When a place is too dark, it makes you feel a little scared, right? It's like you don't want to move. You don't know if you're safe or not. So exactly what you're saying. It's very important to make that distinction right. It means that incorporating lighting into an environment doesn't have to be damaging, right? We just need to make sure that the quality of lighting is right for the environment as well as ourselves, because darkness is not comfortable at all.

No, and that's why I mentioned my my little story at the beginning because I I was really having this sort of like dual moment, right, I am so fascinating, what with the stars and everything, but at the same time, when I look down and I look around me, it's like I don't see anything. I better not even move because I don't know.

I don't know where I can go and moving right in front of your eyes.

That's how dark it is, yeah exactly, exactly, and um, and it does. We are unfortunately well, maybe it's not an unfortunate, but it we are beings that have developed our, our environment, our, our relationships around the availability of light right. So we need to not only accept that, but we also need to understand how we can still function after hours without necessarily damaging the environment around us.

Definitely A hundred percent.

It is that balance. It's a very difficult one to achieve, and we're still trying to figure out what that balance is, and I think that's perfectly fine. It's just that I would not push for one end or the other right, because at the end of the day, these are both extremes, and extremes are never good.

So tell me a bit more about the seawater lamp initiative that you're talking about. Maybe that was just something you mentioned in passing, but that is something that I haven't heard of before. Do you know anything more about it?

I don't know much about it. I did see it in one of the online design magazines and I thought it was fascinating because, obviously, me, being from venezuela, I I really felt attracted to that, to that program. So the the the way, the people in this area are indigenous people, of course, and they still live, in a way or another, a little bit like they used to live before the colonization of the Americans, right? Not exactly, of course, the development has changed their way of life to a certain extent, but the fact is that they they do not have the same access to electric lighting as everybody else. However, it is needed, right? Otherwise, for them it would be very difficult to move around.

I mean, if you think about people that have no electric lighting, then they will always find, or try to find, a way to move, to create light. Sometimes it's kerosene lamps, sometimes it's torches, whatever it is, but it's not going to be a safe environment, right? When you introduce fire into your environment, there's always some level of risk. So this lamp, like I said, the one thing that I know is that in this area, being in the coast, it just uses the environment to create the lighting that they need. They can fill the lamp with seawater and the lamp will ionize the water and create light and create electricity. And my understanding is that that ionization process can last a couple of days, so they don't have to go and gather water every four or five hours or something like that. So in that sense it's actually very, very useful.

Because when you mentioned it I thought oh wow, that is something I have not heard, but what a clever idea that is.

And I'm sure hey, I only mentioned two programs here, right, but I'm sure, and I think I've seen a couple of other.

Yeah, there are many more programs out there. For example, my husband has a little lamp here from I think it's a friend that gave it to him. They were trying to address light poverty in certain parts of Africa and it's just a little square that gets charged with sunlight throughout the day and then it just functions at night. And it has a similar approach to the seawater lamp in the sense that you can not just use it for light, but you can also charge certain devices from it, so it creates electricity, not just light, but being light such an important part of our life after dark, then obviously that is one of the main things that they want to um, that they want to use the these gadgets for I loved how you brought up as well, because this is something that I haven't also um known before you mentioned.

It was about the, the global average light. Uh, yeah, was a lot of pollution.

Yep, the global. It's the average global brightness of. So if you take all this around the world and you create a global average. Right the ones that are the least bright against the ones that are the brightest and you create a global average. Then the top 10 that we showed here is actually cities or metropolitan areas that are way above that global average.

Well, I was quite surprised to see St Petersburg on there and some of the Russian cities, and even Finland was on there and I wouldn't have thought that. But yeah, some of the surprising ones actually.

I can't exactly say why. Obviously because this is just a ranking that in my research I found, and a friend actually shared it with me, but it would be interesting to find out whether this snow has a lot to do with that. You know, saint peter, saint petersburg, moscow, finland, of course, all of those cities. They spend a lot of the year with the snow cover and being, you know, snow being white, obviously, or light in color I wonder if that comes into play because of the reflection.

I haven't actually gone into researching that, but when I saw the ranking that was my thought. Maybe this has something to play.

Coming back to a regulatory, governmental level, when you talked about again mitigating and preserving, do you see that being a bit like them trying to tackle climate change, where every country is trying to maybe set targets for themselves, a bit like they did with the Paris Agreement for trying to mitigate global warming? Is there something similar Like how do you see that?

Yes, is something similar Like how do you see that? Yes, I do think the shift to LEDs is something that has been done just to save energy and tackle the carbon emissions Absolutely, and that's why I mentioned in the presentation that many, many communities are concerned about shifting from their legacy sources to LED, because the thought process is, oh, leds are going to be brighter or LEDs are going to be cooler, and the problem is that many cities have made this shift without really thinking about it. It's more. I'm going to look at it from the point of view of energy. I'm not looking at it from the point of view of energy. I'm not looking at it from the point of view of quality quality lighting. Right Again, as an example, back home, back in Venezuela, there was a moment in time a few years ago where the government wanted people to lower their use of energy in the evenings, and so they promoted the use of compact fluorescent lighting, and of course, they just gave them away.

Right, okay, come, get your lamps so that you pay less in energy. And it did work in that sense. But it also backfired in the sense that people didn't like the quality of the light that they introduced into their homes. So we have to look at street lighting and community lighting in the same way, right? It's not just about saving energy that they introduce into their homes, so we have to look at street lighting and community lighting in the same way, right? It's not just about saving energy you can still do that, right, by shifting to LEDs but we also need to look at LEDs as this source that has many different characteristics that we have to regulate.

We need to look at the color temperature. You need to look at the availability of the blue spectrum. We need to look at the distribution of the light, whether it is full cutoff or half cutoff. There's so many different items that we have to look at. Also, the dimming levels, like the examples that I showed in Tucson, right, because at the end of the day, we're going from a legacy lamp that is not so smart to a lamp that has the ability to be smart right, and we can use that. We can use that smart part of the LED lighting to go beyond, just simply, energy savings. But I do think, as you say, that the change in cities is coming from that point of view. I mean, after all, the carbon emissions is something that we definitely need to take care of, but we always need to be careful in how we move from one extreme to the other. Like I said, we always have to find a balance.

I think that's a really great way, I think, to end the Q&A, I guess after the presentation. So thank you again. I'm sure that our audience will have more questions, which I guess they can come through whenever people want to comment. That'll be great. And yeah, thanks again, maria, for coming on to doing your presentation for the virtual lighting design community. At some point we will be having a panel discussion with others who have talked about a similar topic. I mentioned a couple of them, but we also had Charles Stone talk about dark sky and Paulina Villalobos also talked about it. So we might organize a panel and we, you know, at a time when we come together and then we can actually delve a little bit more into what each of us have talked about in those presentations. I think that would be another great way to explore that topic a bit more, if you're keen for that.

Yeah, absolutely, that would be fantastic. Yeah, I love it. We can all bring our own little piece of knowledge into the conversation Exactly.

It's all about education. I think, yeah, absolutely. What you mentioned is the conversation it's all about education. I think that's what you mentioned is the key, all right.

Well, thank you so much to you and to the VLDC. I'm looking forward to more.

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