I swore to myself I wouldn't steep so low as to respond to this, buy anyway...
The correlation between the lighting engineer and the plumber is not exactly accurate. Light pollution may be partially caused by a certain quantity of light shining directly into the sky. It is also caused by the reflection of light from the target surface.
When the plumber installs a water pipe in a house, it's made leak free, not so much as to conserve water but to minimise the effect it would have on it's surroundings. Water is actually extremely cheap. The commercial rate in Co. Meath (for example) is approx. €1.10 per 1000 litres, which is very cheap.
Lighting: energy, up to recently, was relatively cheap. It's only in recent times that fuel prices have soared and we have started to try and conserve energy. On another level, our understanding of the effects of light pollution on our environment are increasing all the time. The difficulty though is placing a financial value on the environment.
The effects of light spilling into the night sky may not be as instantaneously obviously as all the pipes in your house leaking and your house getting washed down the road.
Besides, significant quantities of water (thousands upon thousands of litres) are lost through underground pipes every day. However, I don't hear anyone jumping up and down about it shouting profanities. The fact is, water in Ireland is extremely cheap and a lot of the time it isn't financially viable to try and trace down & repair every leak.
At the end of the day, money talks, whether we like it or not. I personally would be very reluctant to call anyone an idiot without knowing the full facts first as it would discredit my own position.
Futhermore, the job of a lighting engineer is to spread light where as the job of a plumber is to contain water. Totally different things!
Now, nothing good has ever been achieved by the childish attitude of shouting "you are an idiot" at an entire proffession. Stop and think and see what's driving the other side before you lower yourself to school-playground-level antics.
As I see it the biggest threat to the campaign against light pollution is people shouting abuse at the other side rather than pro-actively engaging with them. As soon as you make it an "us and them" situation you will loose because once that happens both sides start talking at each other and productive communication ends.
