Return to a Darker Age

By A. ROGER EKIRCH, Published: January 7, 2012

IN the wake of widespread violence during the New York City blackout of 1977, a newspaper columnist quipped that just one flick of a light switch separated civilization from primordial chaos.

Leaving the hyperbole aside, artificial illumination has arguably been the greatest symbol of modern progress. By making nighttime infinitely more inviting, street lighting — gas lamps beginning in the early 1800s followed by electric lights toward the end of the century — drastically expanded the boundaries of everyday life to include hours once shrouded in darkness. Today, any number of metropolitan areas in the United States and abroad, bathed in the glare of neon and mercury vapor, bill themselves as 24-hour cities, open both for business and pleasure.

So it is all the more remarkable that, in what appears to be a spreading trend, dozens of cities and towns across America — from California and Oregon to Maine — are contemplating significantly reducing the number of street lamps to lower their hefty electric bills. In some communities, utility companies have already torn posts from the ground. Faced with several million dollars in unpaid bills, Highland Park, Mich., has lost two-thirds of its lamps, whereas officials in Rockford, Ill., have extinguished as many as 2,300, or 16 percent of all the city’s streetlights.

(ver artículo completo "Return to a Darker Age" por Roger Ekirch publicado en el NYT)