Turn off those lights!

What’s with this fetish for having office blocks lit up like Christmas trees that can be seen from outer space and probably beyond?

I suspect it might be fashion. Somebody started lighting up their edifice, first with floodlights from the outside and then from the inside. Not to be outdone, others followed, leading to the beacons we have today.

The practice has to be wasteful, an eyesore, garish and almost certainly unnecessary as these lit-up temples suck electricity out of a grid that is supposedly suffering and struggling with its outdated infrastructure and giving us major grief with the resultant astronomical price hikes in power of recent months.

The most obvious reason for this brilliance is security, light up the building on the inside and men in masks carrying bags marked “swag” over their shoulders can clearly be seen from the outside. Well then perhaps it is to help the prowling security staff and prevent them from having to grope around for light switches; in which case, what ever happened to the oversize torches they used to carry that could easily double as a weapon.

I can’t believe it is security especially as today we have sophisticated sensors that can detect a fly walking on the surface of the moon, take its temperature and determine its sex. Of course, power stations, to be economical, have to run full time because of the elaborate run-down and start-up procedures that take time and careful management. You just cannot switch a power station on and off.

And while there is usually less demand for electricity at night, the generators are still pouring out amps and volts to feed these edifices. With today’s technology, is it not possible to mitigate the effects of night-time demand and allow some power stations to be shut down completely without the run-down and start-up ritual so saving lots of coal and not a few emissions?

Now I am no tree-hugging protesting greenie who gets kicks from building and living on a platform 20 m up a convenient gum tree and ensuring people stay away because I have not washed for a month. But I hate wastage and that is what I see in these over-lit buildings unless there is very good reason for it of which I am unaware.

Is it because to switch on all the lights when the offices open in the morning puts too much demand on the grid or the office switchboard? Of course, there are those who stand and go ooh aah at the lights they say make the city look its best but are they just from the dark outer suburbs?

But all is not lost. There is a time called Earth Hour that every March draws more and more followers of those interested in the sustainability and environment of our planet. Earth Hour, founded in Australia, has now become an institution as native as kangaroos, koalas and Chips Rafferty and has spread throughout the world.

For an hour cities dim their lights and for a brief time the stargazers have their frustrations eased as they can look at the heavens without a refracted glow. So if we can dim our lights once a year, how come we can’t make it permanent? Obviously we need some light for safety and security but do we really need to be able to read a book of small print by the light of office tower blocks while we wait for a bus? I don’t believe we do. We talk a lot about conservation, being greener, saving the trees and whales, but for the size of the problem there is precious little action. Still, cities a quarter the size of Sydney can be seen glowing from space while our not infinite resources are going up in smoke through the power stations’ stacks.

And if we have to have excessive and surplus generating capacity, perhaps some enlightened personage could erect a few more street lamps on minor through routes in the outer suburbs that at present are strangely dim.