Take a look at this image of Europe at night. Countries and their urban centres are easily picked out by, are delineated by, lights. Streetlights. Motorway lights. Architectural lights. Car park lights. Shop lights. Security lights. The combined glow from millions of bulbs, tubes, spotlights. All of those lights are illuminating something precious, something fragile and irreplaceable which they should not be illuminating, which they were never intended to illuminate: the night sky. It's all totally unnecessary.
Ever looked down from a plane at all those lights? If you can see them, they are polluting the night sky. If you can look down on lights from any vantage point where you live, they are polluting the night sky. If your local shopping centre is lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree all night, why? If your neighbour's security light keeps going on, why? Nobody pays any attention to their neighbours' security lights: their only function is to rather helpfully show burglars where the doors and windows are. So what is the point of using them at all? The average security light throws a fair proportion of its light upwards, and that part which actually hits the ground bounces back into the sky from patios and paths.
And it's not just a question of extinguishing lights: few people in towns and cities would, quite understandably, want to live in darker streets. It's also a question of redesigning lighting fixtures so that all of their light goes downwards and not up into the sky. It's a matter of reducing their brightness too: with correctly-hooded street lights, for example, you don't need such powerful light sources, because 100% of the light is illuminating the road. You can use low-pressure, low-wattage sodium lights in streetlights and cut their energy consumption by a huge amount at a stroke, while retaining their level of illumination. Local councils are wasting your hard-earned money by continuing to use wasteful and inefficient street lights.
A Natural Disaster
If light pollution were an oil spill from a supertanker, those responsible would be prosecuted and punished. If it were a major earthquake or flood, offers of help would be pouring in from all over the world. But light pollution, at a basic level, does an equal amount of harm to our natural environment, if you define the latter simply as the surroundings in which we all live. It's another poignant example of how so many humans carelessly destroy nature, as if nature were something to be mastered, tamed, conquered, subjugated to their will. Light pollution is a natural disaster, to compare with any other which humans have ever unleashed upon the planet, yet few are ever taken to task for it. Instead of laws we have guidelines, voluntary codes of conduct, endless bureaucracy, total inertia. The Czech Republic is so far the only country in the world to have introduced strict and nationwide anti-light pollution laws. Do you know how? They just did it.
Few people, it seems, appreciate that, unless we start tackling the problem seriously, very soon there is going to be a whole generation of children who have never seen anything more in the sky than the brightest stars and planets. Already, very few people in the urban jungle have ever seen the Milky Way in all its glory, nor seen the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye. In Britain, for example, only in parts of Snowdonia, on the tip of Cornwall or in the far north of Scotland can one see truly dark skies. The amber glow is everywhere: it sweeps like a curtain across the sky, concealing the marvels of the Universe behind it.
Connections
Humans undoubtedly have deep pyschological links with the Universe, even if they do not realise it, yet they stand to lose that connection with nature, that deep-rooted yearning to belong to their natural environment. It's part of our primaeval urge to understand who we are and where we came from. It's what sets us apart, what makes us human. All of the atoms in our bodies, with the exception of water, were created in the hearts of dying stars: we are part of the Universe in a very literal sense. Anyone who has never stood under the stars on a dark, clear night is distanced from the beauty, majesty and mystery of the Universe, from their beginnings, and is pyschologically the poorer for it. And anyone who is not deeply stirred by the experience is totally isolated from what it means to be human.
Losing It
There is, among the general public and contrary to what some people think, an enormous appetite for learning about the night sky. Should you doubt this, let me relate a little anecdote: when I was Secretary of an Astronomical Society, we regularly ran observing nights for the general public. The weather conspired to ruin the evenings more often than not, but every single time we announced an observing night there was enormous interest and we were often amazed at how many people had turned out on chilly nights to look through our telescopes. There was a never-ending stream of questions from people aged from seven to seventy. People wanted to know about their Universe, to see the stars, galaxies, nebulae and planets which would be plainly visible to everybody, on every clear night of the year, if it were not for their light-polluted skies.
Twenty years ago I could see the Andromeda Galaxy from the centre of Brighton. Now it's impossible. You can barely see the stars of the constellation, let alone the nearest spiral galaxy to our own. If nothing is done, in another twenty years what will be visible from centre of towns at night? Only the Moon, I would suspect. And then we really will have reached a point where the starry sky is just a memory, something to look up on the internet or read about in books.
What You Can Do
So to give everybody back that chance of connecting with their Universe, we need to start demanding change. We need to start pressurising local councils to replace light-polluting streetlights with properly-designed ones. We need to ask shops to turn their lights off at night. We need to ask our neighbours not to use brilliant security lights, and explain to them why (one DIY store in Britain was selling a type of home security light which was more powerful than a lighthouse!) We need to ask why so much architectural lighting is really necessary. Do we really need to illuminate office blocks, shopping centres and municipal buildings at night? Why cannot those lights be programmed to switch off, say, at 1 a.m.? And, of course, an extremely important consideration: we need to save energy. The United States, so it's estimated, burns 20 million barrels of oil a year just to light the night sky. One would therefore suppose that vastly reducing light pollution would be a higher priority for governments than it is. But sadly, this is one area of energy waste which seems to be either ignored altogether or placed very low down on the list of solutions to tackle climate change. Combating light pollution should be an integral part of our effort to preserve the environment, not its poor cousin. The evil of light pollution should be conveyed to the public with the same urgency and insistence that they are asked to switch their TVs fully off at night or recycle their rubbish. It should be taught in schools and discussed at council meetings.
If you want to get more involved, you might like to join an organisation like the Campaign for Dark Skies or the International Dark Sky Association . The former is run by the British Astronomical association: the latter is an American organisation which is achieving regular successes in turning back the tide. The people who run these organisations are motivated siimply by wanting the Universe back, for the good of all. They want that which has been stolen to be returned.
Don't let the night sky be a spectacle seen only from planetaria. We can all do our bit. Doesn't the fading Universe make you angry? It should do. So do something about it! Discuss it with friends, family, colleagues. In your own home, turn off any external lights which are not absolutely necessary to have on during the hours of darkness. Don't use external security lights, but if you must, make sure they are properly angled, and of the lowest power which is required to do the job. If your local DIY store is selling over-the-top powerful security lights, take it up with them. And while you are there, ask them if it's really necessary to keep their external lights on all night. Ask your local council if they have an anti-light pollution programme, and above all what their policy is for replacing street lights.
There is plenty of information available at the above websites and other places on the internet you can give to local councils, shops and anybody else who is needlessly polluting the night sky. Join your local astronomical society and get involved. Ask your local newspaper, TV and radio companies if they would be interested in running a feature on the problem. Above all, 90% of the time it's sheer ignorance of the problem which is behind light pollution, and the media can help. On the internet there is a plethora of information freely available to counter this ignorance, which you can use to inform and educate. It's all about raising awareness. We need to press home the issue of light pollution in the same way as the issue of climate change has been raised to forefront of public awareness. Light pollution is part of the same problem: our selfish, destructive and short-sighted attitude towards our environment.
It's not too late to save our starry skies, so, even if it's too late for us adults, let's give our children and grandchildren that which they have the basic human right to, as part of their human heritage: the unrivalled glory of the night sky.
And it's down to you to give them that.
Links
International Dark Sky Association
Campaign for Dark Skies , from the British Astronomical Association
Dark Skies Awareness, a cornerstone project of UNESCO's International Year of Astronomy 2009
Initiative for an international association of dark-sky parks
Dark Skies for Northern Ireland