The Unexpected Unpleasantness of New York's New LED Street Lights

Lionel Shriver writes in The New York Times about the creeping blue glow of New York's new streetlights being installed across the city. The LED's, which are more efficient and last longer, are also terribly unpleasant, according to Shriver.

"In interviews with the media, my fellow experimental subjects have compared the nighttime environment under the new streetlights to a film set, a prison yard, ‘a strip mall in outer space’ and ‘the mother ship coming in for a landing’ in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.’"

Shriver suggests New York follow the model of other cities, including Berkeley, California and Berlin, where the municipalities have altered the color of the LEDs by changing the color temperature to a lower wattage. The lower the wattage, the softer the lights. Ultimately, a lower temperature would result in less efficiency, but Shriver asks if that isn't a worthwhile trade-off for a more aesthetically pleasing environment.