Walking down to the town today, Em and I were staggered to see so many lights left on at, I presume, not inconsiderable public expense. The alien landing lights I’ve blogged about previously were among the worst offenders, all but one blazing away into a bright April afternoon (I presume the bulb has already gone in that one).

Lighting Column

To deal with this sort of environmental thoughtlessness, a school in Boston installed animated polar bears to show how well students were conserving energy:

“For example, when energy use is low, such as early in the morning, the bear is asleep and happy. But as energy use rises as students turn on computers, televisions and music devices, the ice can begin melting under the bear’s paws – and if energy use really peaks – the poor bear falls in and flails in the open water.”

I rather suspect that, between ET’s landing zone and the purple squid tentacles, Basildon Council’s polar bear would have come to a distinctly watery end a long time ago.

Most of us realise we are stuck with these ugly, purple up-lighters, even though we live in a time when most people are worried about the fact there is far too much artificial upward illumination at night.

However, please, please, please could someone turn out the lights in the day!

At least we can see what use the purple posts will be put to by creative locals in the coming years…

There is only one description for this whole project:

Epic fail.