La Palma’s streetlights are (for the most part) dark sky friendly: amber-colored, shielded to the ground, and not overly bright. However, the simplest rule to avoid light pollution is to only illuminate what and when needed. Or simply: Don’t illuminate at all when nobody needs light.
Near the town of Los Llanos de Aridane, mindful nighttime visitors find a strange sight: several highway-like roads with not much around. That’s the industrial park known as “Callejon de la Gata”, famous only because of a long lasting battle of some citizens against the construction of an asphalt plant there. The rest of the park is almost empty (maybe because it’s just too big for an island like La Palma?)
Despite its obvious disuse, the empty streets in Callejon de la Gata are brightly illuminated with state of the art streetlights. Bearing in mind the ongoing discussion about global climate change, and the fact that La Palma’s electricity is mostly produced by burning fossil fuels – what about switching off these unused, wasteful lights, at least until someone needs them?
