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Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

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Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#321

Post by kingnothing »

tomcooks wrote: post #317
flippinburgers wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least moss is beautiful. Personally I don't have a problem with "weeds" as Americans see them. If covid ever lets up, you should try taking your wife on a trip to Japan. The moss in Japanese gardens is extraordinary!

I assume it has to do with the US house price laws that mandate one takes care of the lawn, or risk incurring in fines or losing the house (quoting an US friend not sure about the details)

There are no such laws. What some neighborhoods do have are homeowners associations which, in practice, function as micro governments, and can mandate such things. About 25% of all homes in the US have an HOA, and those will all vary in what maintenance they require. Some are expensive and strict, some are optional and just there to take care of a sign and lighting at the front entrances.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#322

Post by drums8787 »

wenc wrote: post #86
thatguy0900 wrote: post #16

I actually was sitting outside a few nights ago and realized that there was no more fireflies, and I couldn't remember the last time I had seen one. I used to go out all the time during summer as a kid to catch them, they would light up whole fields. That was just like 15 years ago. Pretty sobering realization

I'm in Chicago (in a neighborhood close to downtown) and in previous years I'd hardly ever seen any fireflies. This year, they're everywhere -- in parks and even in trees on neighborhood streets. I understand fireflies are sensitive to light pollution. I can't imagine Chicago's any different from other major cities. COVID has people staying home a lot more but that has nothing to do with street lighting. I wonder wha…

Could it be that because of COVID you have time to pay more attention? I wonder that sometimes about things I've "noticed" during the past 6 months. Maybe it accounts for some of it at least.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#324

Post by pintxo »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #298
groby_b wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use and access of those logs is strictly regulated, and yes, it is enforced. Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)

I wonder if those German workplace freedoms stem from a different legal system of culpability. In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. If the employer can show that the employee actively sidestepped the employer’s controls, the employer can make a good case against liability. I wonder if anything like that can happen…

Usually, the locale employee organization ("Betriebsrat") will negotiate a contract with the employer ("Betriebsvereinbarung") where the usage of company equipment for private use is regulated. Haven't read one in years, but would assume, that this case is handled there, and gives the employer the right to check logs etc in case of criminal/legal inquiries.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#325

Post by ksdale »

lostapathy wrote: post #287
kortilla wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they impressive in that regard? You’re not forced to purchase a home that has legal obligations.

I’m about the same sense that I’m not forced to buy electricity from the local power utility Large parts of the country have very little housing stock, especially newer housing, that isn’t HOA-encumbered.

This. We bought a house in an HOA and I definitely had a moment where I was like, "Wait a minute, some guy bought this land, subdivided it, and created this HOA out of thin air and now here we are, 40 years later, living under that HOA he made up. None of the original owners even live here anymore!"

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#326

Post by pintxo »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #298
groby_b wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use and access of those logs is strictly regulated, and yes, it is enforced. Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)

I wonder if those German workplace freedoms stem from a different legal system of culpability. In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. If the employer can show that the employee actively sidestepped the employer’s controls, the employer can make a good case against liability. I wonder if anything like that can happen…

It's likely an effect of data privacy being established as one of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the German constitution and further strengthened by specific laws like the German data privacy law, which is a lot older than GDPR.

Interestingly data privacy (more precisely the "Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung") is not named explicitly in the constitution, but has been "created" by the German constitutional court in 1983 in the context of a law suite against the German census of 1983 [1].

Historically I would argue all of this is the result of the experience 1933-1945 and also the (what was known at that time) experience in East Germany, the communist German Democratic Republic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informational_self-determinati...

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#327

Post by ryaan_anthony »

wenc wrote: post #86
thatguy0900 wrote: post #16

I actually was sitting outside a few nights ago and realized that there was no more fireflies, and I couldn't remember the last time I had seen one. I used to go out all the time during summer as a kid to catch them, they would light up whole fields. That was just like 15 years ago. Pretty sobering realization

I'm in Chicago (in a neighborhood close to downtown) and in previous years I'd hardly ever seen any fireflies. This year, they're everywhere -- in parks and even in trees on neighborhood streets. I understand fireflies are sensitive to light pollution. I can't imagine Chicago's any different from other major cities. COVID has people staying home a lot more but that has nothing to do with street lighting. I wonder wha…

Just wait til you get lantern flies, they're no where near as cool.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#328

Post by pintxo »

dependenttypes wrote: post #234
adrianN wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germans for example have an expectation of privacy at the workplace. It's not allowed to monitor a German employee's web browsing on a work computer. In the US the employer can monitor them all they want.

That does not seem very enforceable. Surely their internal DNS server and routers keep logs for example.

It's enforced to the point where the access control system to the building, even if it tracks entry and exit timestamps, cannot be used for e.g. time keeping or to monitor employee attendance. German companies will have to have a separate time keeping system, even if the access control system uses the exact same (RFID) cards for identification.

Re: Germany plans to dim lights at night to save insects

#329

Post by lostmyoldone »

gamblor956 wrote: post #125
thiago_fm wrote: post #10

I wonder how many centuries it might take for the US to start to care about insects or the environment like some European countries do with the recent regress in policies overall that isn't about ONLY increasing overall GDP in the US. And I say this even not considering Trump, which is a big menace. But democrat candidates in the US also don't care about the environment, not showing much promise. So do the Americans…

The states of California and Alaska each individually have more wild forest lands than the entire European continent. The US created the concept of state-protected wilderness reserves and national parks. The US was the driving force behind the Kyoto Protocol, and the originating nation of solar power, wind power, and nuclear power. California leads the world in automobile fuel economy targets, and the US as a whole h…

If Europe is far behind, it's by some other measure than what is actually considered the most pressing environmental concerns of today.

The average American use about three times the fossil fuels the average Swede does, and if the statistics are correct, the ratio has been increasing for decades.

Germany is one of the European countries with the highest fossil fuel usage, at about half the US consumption per capita.

The European average seems to about half the US average.

As for Sweden, we've got strict rules for almost any kind of emission, and diesel cars have never been very common here.

California is great, Kyoto was great, but actual environment track record over the entire United States is far from great. Unfortunately.

If US has led as much in action as in words, I'd be happy to name you the best.

We're only 10 million in Sweden, and it's outright depressing to think how little it matters even if we reduce emissions to zero. It's still the right thing to aim at, and I hope we continue on this track, but it would be much easier if big economies like the US were more heavily invested.

It is of course very lucrative to try to convince others to use more expensive energy sources, and yourself use a cheaper one. Which is one perspective of the US involvement in Kyoto that is hard to entirely dismiss because of the somewhat lackluster results overall. The changeover to more gas instead of coal is good, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that US oil consumption alone is more than most EU countries use in combined oil, coal, and gas.

I'm all for big wild forest lands, I probably spent the first decades of my life more in forests than outside them, but that has barely anything to do with being environmentally conscious. It has little bearing on acting in the best interests of the environment, and all people who depends on it. It doesn't matter how much you care for the forest lands if excess carbon dioxide cause entire biomes to disappear, which is a significant concern today.

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