NASA astronaut Don Pettit discusses the shifting ways cultures view themselves: "There was a time when smokestacks showed how affluent your society was, but we look at these now almost with disdain. Light, or light pollution, will probably fall in this same category. Where now we equate the wealth of your society with how many lights you can burn at nighttime, ... in the future ... affluent societies ... will still be producing all the necessary light they need for night time use but not so much light that it bleeds off into space and spoils our nighttime sky" (qtd.in City Dark).
How true... Affluence used to be judged based off of smokestacks/lights, but now humans have begun to realize the side effects of these things. We now determine opulence by the reduction of our "carbon footprint" and how "green" we are. Light and subsequent light pollution is inevitably bound to take the same turn.
My friend likes to take pictures of the sunset at dusk because of how pretty it can be. Below is one of her pictures. She sometimes comments that she wishes the electricity poles weren't there because they detract from the beauty of the sunset. It was taken on an iPhone so it's not the greatest quality because of how it transferred to a computer, but you can make out some of the poles.
She get's annoyed because poles "pollute" the serenity of the landscape, but she realizes that they're necessary for the human race's modern lifestyle. They're similar to light pollution, in that it's a bit of an eyesore, but it's necessary.
However, humans as a whole have an eye for aesthetics. And we're advanced enough, so surely we'll be able to find solutions to these problems.
One idea I have is to ground all electrical wires. We have so many pipelines for water, gas, sewage, etc. So we can find a way to implement this strategy to wires. This would prove especially helpful in hurricane-prone areas such as where we live. If a hurricane hits, and our wires are grounded in appropriate pipelines, the loss of electricity in our towns would be reduced drastically.
I feel like, realistically, this should be implemented sometime in the future. Although I probably don't understand all the pros/cons that go into it...
But this could also be the case for combating light pollution: find a way to reduce the amount of light that radiates into the night sky.
The most realistic sounding strategy seems to be just finding out which lights need to stay on in the night, and which don't; a sort of selective lighting approach. Maybe we just need dimmer lights than what we use now at night, which may help provide aid to issues in melatonin production in those who are still up in the nighttime hours - since drops in melatonin production have been linked to bright lights at night.
Depending on how much awareness is raised, I'm confident that solutions will be found regarding light pollution in the future.
You have some good ideas on how to reduce light pollution. We could also start by not having so many lights on at night. After watching "The City Dark" I no longer turn on my back porch light.
ReplyDeleteI can't turn off my front lights becuase they automatically come on at night. But there are little things that we can start doing and hopefully our country will soon see the problem and come up with a solution like making buildings turn off lights at night.