Good article !
Despite Australia being the darkest (except Antarctica) continent of all this is bad news. Please keep Australia dark !
When you are 100km outside SYD (e.g. the Blue Mountains) it is pitch dark.
About the residental lighting: that is a problem easy to solve. I have three outdoor lamps in my garden (pointing downward) which work on a motion detector and then keep on for 5 minutes, so normally they are off. When I go to observe, I turn off the main switch of it to prevent switching on when walking through my garden.
http://pix.skysurfer.eu/outdoorlight.jpg
When everyone has a motion detector the sky would be a lot darker as the lights are only on when needed.
This link reveals the global light pollution in a Google Maps style.
LED lighting is in many cases an improvement as they direct the light more downward. Here we have LED streetlamps of which one shines a bit into my garden but lots less than before last summer when there was a fluorescent tube in it.
http://www.blue-marble.de/nightlights/2012
Here in Holland it is one of the most light polluted areas in the world beside Guangzhou/Hongkong or Shanghai while the rest of China is relatively dark compared to W-Europe or eastern N-America.