Talk politics.

These orange street lights maybe a thing of the past.

Over the next few years, many cities and localities will be replacing their street lamps (typically high pressure sodium gas which emits either a pinkish to yellowish to orange hue based on the light wattage and the ballast used in the fixture) and migrating their fixtures to the more 20 to 40 percent more economical LED lights.

Large-scale streetlight-upgrade programs have already begun in New York, Anchorage, San Jose, Pittsburgh, and many other cities. In Los Angeles, a $57 million project backed by the city’s Department of Water and Power and the Clinton Climate Initiative will replace 140,000 of the city’s 209,000 streetlights. Michael Siminovitch, the director of the California Lighting Technology Center at UC Davis, argues that the true potential and savings of the new lighting are less a matter of the source than of digital “adaptive controls.” Unlike sodium lights, LEDs and other next-generation lights can be tuned to various colors, easily dimmed, arranged into luminous surfaces and shapes, and turned on and off instantly.[1]

Many photographers and film makers despise the orange sodium lights: "(one filmmaker, Tenolian Bell, called it “the ugliest light known to the cinematographer”); movie cameras simulate its color by using a gel filter named Bastard Amber." Personally I *LOVE* the color of these lights, and in the winter time, snow shows up really well under these type of lights (the mercury vapor lights for some reason don't). I can vouch about the changing the color of LEDs, they're the rage in salt water fish tanks now, and you can have computer designed light shows in your fish tank with literally hundreds of light combination and hues. They use hardly any wattage compared to metal lights used on such tanks, and also generate NO heat.

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[1.] Source.

[2.] The history of street lighting in the United States.

[3.] LEDs color range demonstrated in salt water fish tank lighting.


[4.] Torrence, California's beta testing of LED lamp fixtures.