If you also care about dark skies you might be interested in dark sky preserves¹ and the IDA².
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark-sky_preserve (2) https://www.darksky.org/
Instead of pocketing the difference in greater photon production efficiency the trend has been to just make things brighter.(where they really don't need to be)
Not to mention, not just lighting use, but lighting design needs a complete rethink in the age of leds. Much nighttime lighting, public and private used to cast a nice, pleasant glow, now very often led nighttime lighting is far too bright, and produced in wavelengths that can be quite unpleasant on the eyes, and registers as cold, sterile, and unnatural.
The problem of light pollution is not solely about energy wastefulness. Light pollution disrupts natural rhythms and ecosystems. The blotting out of the night sky is a great loss for the human soul and human experience.
They also do an end run around the legal efforts to contain or limit light pollution.
In my state, we have the Dark Skies Act which tries to limit the amount of light pollution in certain areas, but it largely hasn't been updated for the use of LEDs. Some counties now define light output based on lumens, but the law AFAIK still references wattage limits. So, new lights that, under the intent of the law, are too bright and require shielding can probably skirt around it (IANAL).
But, almost no one knows about it, so enforcement is spotty at best.
(I'm slightly annoyed presently, because some new neighbors installed a floodlight that's pointed directly at my bedroom from across the valley and it doesn't appear to be doing anything useful. Stargazing and amateur astronomy is going to suck this summer.)
Are you saying that people are replacing, say, 100W bulbs with LEDs consuming 100W? I find that hard to believe, given that LEDs emit the same amount of light at approximately 1/10 the wattage. That would mean we're replacing 100W of incandescent bulbs with 1000W equivalent of LEDs? Or, is this versus fluorescent, which would be more of a 1.5-2:1 wattage equivalent exchange rate?
As for LEDs being "cold, sterile, and unnatural," that seems to be primarily a property of older LED bulbs. Newer bulbs are perfectly capable of emitting light at virtually any color temperature between 3000-6500K, which encompasses everything from "soft white" to daylight. Personally, I prefer daylight balanced bulbs, because I do some color sensitive work, and those bulbs have the highest available CRI of any non-incandescent bulb, but many people do prefer the "soft white" style. Even for non-color sensitive work, I find them too yellow for my liking, but I get that this is all down to personal preference.
Sodium vapor lights were the common lighting mode through the early 2000s and have a soft warm orange glow that was somewhat soothing.
The new LED street / parking lot lights are high color temperature 'daylight' style stadium lights, and have not had improved diffusers or reductions in effective lumen output. Many who don't have to spend time near these lights see it as an anti-crime benefit and ignore all other social costs.
The sweet spot for lumens per watt is about 5000K I think, so there is also a power efficiency angle which is probably why a lot of these new lights are way too blue.
But light pollution, while producing waste heat, is also just unnecessary in general.
We don't need to keep office buildings lit all night, we don't need to have cities lit up all night like sports fields. Night time lighting should be on a targeted and as needed basis.
Light pollution: not deadly.
Air, water, soil pollution: all catastrophically deadly.
The effects may not be as immediately obvious or severe as the other types of pollution, but it is deadly
Time to turn off the lights https://www.nature.com/articles/457027a
Limiting the impact of light pollution on human health, environment and stellar visibility https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030147971...
Light pollution as a biodiversity threat. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/abstract/20103347944
Light pollution disrupts sleep in free-living animals https://www.nature.com/articles/srep13557
LIGHT POLLUTION IN THE CONTEXT OF THREATS TO THE WILDLIFE CORRIDORS https://search.proquest.com/openview/f2decb732d52abd6837baa7...
Understanding, Assessing, and Resolving Light-Pollution Problems on Sea Turtle Nesting Beaches http://aquaticcommons.org/115/
I still think it's rather absurd to care more about light pollution than any other kind of pollution.
What should we care about then? Is pollution worse than COVID19? Human trafficking?
There are so many problems in this world, we need different people working on different problems.
In contrast light pollution deprives you of a good view and messes up some nocturnal animals. Sure, it’s not great, but compared to other forms of pollution it’s almost a non issue.
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
... or in other words: the most relevant component in the light pollution factor is the exponential factor of human reproduction.