In my spare time, I'm an amateur astronomer. I spend a lot of time looking at the stars and other nighttime objects with my own telescopes, showing them to other people, and sharing various astro-geeky ideas. Because of this, I'm acutely aware of how our skies get affected by ever-growing cities, particularly city lights.
Light pollution is an aesthetic problem and an economic problem, and it's easily fixable, yet the best way to fix it is with -- you guessed it -- a few laws and regulations. Because of this, there are the usual opponents, from the Bush League / Cato school of business development.
More below.
Here's the Little Dipper as you may see it from a small town, or maybe 20-30 miles away from a larger city. The skies aren't super dark, but not bright either:
You can easily see the dipper in there, along with a few other stars. Now look at it from someplace genuinely dark, like the middle of the Great Plains:
It's really hard to find the Little Dipper in this mass of stars! Now, compare to what's typical in a big city:
Ouch. The Little....errr, Three Little Pigs? Whatever it is, it isn't a dipper.
From the small town, you can see about 1,500 stars at any one time. From the really dark spot, it's more like 5,000, or even 10,000 if your eyes are good. But from the center of a city? About 100. That's right, 100. For every star you see in the city, there are 15 you can see from a few miles out, and 50 or even 100 from someplace really remote. One star in 100. That's what many people in the world see right now, in the downtowns of major cities.
A generation or two is growing up not having a clue what the night sky is supposed to look like. You may as well say that a painting looks OK if it's missing 99% of its brush strokes, or a forest looks OK after 99% of its trees get cut down. Fortunately, it's easy to dramatically reduce light pollution. Just require light fixtures, as they're replaced, to have shielding to ensure light goes down, where we actually need it. It not only saves the skies, it also saves money -- lots of it -- since you then use much less powerful bulbs to light the smaller area. How much is "lots" of money? One billion dollars a year for replacing just one kind of lighting fixture.
Keep in mind here, no one's proposing to get rid of lights. We would still have lights in most places we have them now. We would still put new lights where we need them, or even just really want them. We spend lots less money to do so. And most residential lights, like small porch lights, are truly minor offenders -- the big problem is with glary, unshielded lights on streets, businesses, and parking lots. So fixing light pollution has real economic benefits, at no cost to human safety or activities, and it's the Right Thing to Do™ for aesthetic and environmental reasons.
A no-brainer? Sadly, no. A few years ago, a proposed light pollution ordinance met with remarks like the following from opponents of the measure:
The effort to regulate lighting is part of an agenda driven by "a radical, left-wing, no-growth, kooky, '70s-hold-over crowd," said Loudoun County, Va., Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio...
Delgaudio warned that Loudoun County might provide "the forces of darkness" the opening to spread their anti-lighting movement nationwide...
Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center (APA), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization "dedicated to the promotion of free enterprise and limited government regulations over commerce and individuals," disagrees. "This is just utterly stupid," he said. "The very fact that they (Loudon County officials) even gave it five minutes of seriousness tells a whole tale," DeWeese said...
"The mission - the absolute guiding light of the ordinances," said Delgaudio, "is to stop what we do during the holiday season."
(emphases added)
Let's see here.
- Throwing your money away is part of "growth" and "promotion of free enterprise".
- Throwing my money away (governments buy street lights too) is part of "growth" and "promotion of free enterprise".
- Lighting up my yard with your damn light is part of "growth" and "promotion of free enterprise".
- Throwing extra light into something that is inherently common, belonging to no one, and thus reducing its value to everyone, is part of "growth" and "promotion of free enterprise".
- Oh yeah...astronomers hate Christmas.
The inmates are running the asylum. I always thought one part of free enterprise was cleaning up your own messes, with your own time and money, just like we all ostensibly learned to do in kindergarten. I also thought it meant respecting other people's property rights, as well as the rights to a "commons" belonging to no one. You don't dump stuff into people's yards (or skies) they don't want. The Bush Leaguers actually are right -- 9/11 changed everything. "Free enterprise" now has a new meaning -- "I get to do whatever I damn well please."
So what do you think? Should we just let the remaining 100 visible stars vanish so everyone with a big billboard or used-car lot can do as they wish with their lights? You make the call.