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by fastball 525 days ago
Energy for the many is more important than astronomy for the few. Hopefully in the future we have more robust energy production (this is a great example of why green energy proponents need to support nuclear – it has far fewer externalities like this) and then we can reclaim the area for astronomical use. That is my point. Nothing is actually destroyed, unlike with other types of pollution. Light pollution is literally the most reversible disruption I can think of. "Destroy" is definitely the wrong verb, unless your goal is for people to ignore you due to histrionics.
2 comments
oldherl 525 days ago
The problem is that the industrial project will attract more people to the site, and a new town would be built with families living there. So even in the imagined best scenario, when you shut down this project, lots of people would lose their jobs. They would have to do some other businesses to support themselves. The light pollution won't be eliminated.
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fastball 524 days ago
Actually, in my imagined best scenario, we would develop better means of producing energy that make a solar farm in the middle of the desert less attractive, causing working there to become less lucrative and encouraging people to find new jobs. The megaproject winds down naturally due to that changing economic landscape (like how I expect the town where I grew up in Texas to die when the oilfield workers no longer frequent it), and the dark zone is reclaimed for astronomy or whatever.
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fnordpiglet 525 days ago
It’s a lot easier to move a project that hasn’t started than to turn off a project that’s become necessary. Once a project like this is built the investment is so large and returns so desired and the workers lives have moved there it’ll never - in any meaningful sense - be turned off.

Or, they could just build elsewhere.

Astronomy and science is not for the few - it’s for everyone everywhere until the end of history. The energy produced in this project is for the project not for the many. The project is for profit, and the output is short lived consumed by the relative few compared to science which benefits all people from then on.

I’m not saying don’t build the project. Just build it somewhere else where we’ve fucked it up already. The fact this is a singular resource means that’s literally everywhere all over the earth other than this one location.

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