[bpodgursky]

Dude your country is 98% desolate and unsuited to agriculture. If you want night sky go to a cabin literally anywhere in your unending and cold mountains instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.

[magicalist]

> instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.

Not an expert, but I would think greenhouse light pollution is not necessary for agriculture? It seems like obvious waste (money spent generating light that isn't going to photosynthesis), but I assume it's cheaper not to shield the lights than to shield them, so it's a matter of ROI and requiring people take care of their externalities.

Is there an economic argument that light shields will make agriculture in that area too expensive?

[bpodgursky]

I mean it's not easy to have greenhouse walls that let sunlight in but don't let grow light out. You can direct the light but you are going to have loss.

[rrr_oh_man]

Yeah, let's not inconvenience companies.

(FYI, it's a solved problem: https://de.made-in-china.com/co_zenong/product_Agriculture-P...)

[wizzwizz4]

Sunlight and grow light generally happen at different times.

[eliaspro]

This is not only about being able to see a nice night sky (although I admit I love seeing one), it's a very much more fundamental issue.

Light pollution has dramatic negative consequences for wildlife and thereby our ecosystem we so heavily depend upon.

[bpodgursky]

Yes it has negative consequences for wildlife, which is why it is FAR BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT to put all the agriculture in one place at high efficiency rather than spread farmland out over otherwise virgin wilderness.

Would you rather have 2x the wilderness 80% degraded or 1x the wilderness 90% degraded? Unless your plan is to decide who starves to death, it's far better to have greenhouses where we already have farms!

[drdexebtjl]

Stop with the false dichotomies. I would rather have no wilderness 90% degraded at all. There are better alternatives than spreading out the farmland. Like better greenhouses that don’t blast grow lights all over the night sky. We have the technology, it’s just cheaper to destroy the environment.

[eliaspro]

OK, looks like I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

Therefore I fully agree with you!

[uv-depression]

I can't just casually hop up to the Yukon for an evening of astronomy. It's about a thirty hour drive. Even relatively small towns have exurbs now because of our terrible city planning, so light pollution extends shockingly far. Alberta's probably the worst, almost the entire province (about the same land area as Texas) has light pollution.

> instead of shutting down agriculture in the only marginal spot on the west coast you can grow food.

The Okanagan will be shocked to hear they can't do agriculture! Perhaps we could just turn off the greenhouse lights for a couple hours, or install retractable shields/mirorrs on top of the greenhouses.

[bpodgursky]

What are you on about? Literally drive north a bit towards Whistler, you can get out of the light pollution in an hour or two

lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=8.01&lat=49.6027&lon=-122.7672&state=eyJiYXNlbWFwIjoiTGF5ZXJCaW5nUm9hZCIsIm92ZXJsYXkiOiJzYl8yMDI1Iiwib3ZlcmxheWNvbG9yIjpmYWxzZSwib3ZlcmxheW9wYWNpdHkiOiI2MCIsImZlYXR1cmVzb3BhY2l0eSI6Ijg1In0=

[uv-depression]

Have you never been there? This light pollution map wildly underestimates light pollution outside of cities. I can tell you from experience you're not getting nearly 22 mpsas skies anywhere near Pemberton.

[drdexebtjl]

The entire world’s agriculture “shut down” at night before we decided we want every crop to be available everywhere year-round.

Just install light shields.

[bpodgursky]

Yes we also had a population of 50 million and 10% of them starved to death every time a volcano burped, they were great times.

[ToucanLoucan]

And 9 million starve to death annually because it isn't profitable to feed them, what's your point?

[bit-anarchist]

The point is that we don't need to increase 0.11% back to 10%. Specially when the base numbers have significantly increased.

[micromacrofoot]

or you know, just adjust the lights a little