Editorial of January 18, 2024

Turn Off Your Lights and Look Up

The holidays are gone, it’s getting colder, the winds are howling, it snows more and ice is threatening our lakes. It’s time to turn off the festive lights of the past few weeks and get on with 2024. It’s also time to think about lights.

Although there is mention of shocks and electric fish as early as 2750 BCE, in Ancient Egypt, electricity probably began for us with Benjamin Franklin’s extensive research in the mid-18th century, part of which included an experiment with a kite, a damp kite string, a metal key, and a storm-threatened sky that revealed the electrical nature of lightning. But it was during the 19th century that electricity came into its own in the U.S., expanding even more with our fast-developing 20th-century industrial economy. Today, electricity is a massive consumer of fossil fuels, leading to serious environmental concerns and an increasing number of demands to figure out how to control its damage to the climate. Some answers lie in solar, wind, and hydropower; others lie in less and better lighting and light fixtures, light timers and sensors, and a reevaluation of existing lighting plans (some of which may even result in no further need for lighting).