Light pollution: how it’s changing the environment
Hello! My name is Inga, I am a student of Vilnius University, Faculty of Natural Sciences (Lithuania), and I am doing a project for my English class. This project is about light pollution: I have interest how can it be dangerous for people or the nature, animals. Or maybe it's not dangerous at all and it causes no damage? Or maybe nobody's noticing it?
Every answer is important, so please do it responsibly.
Thank you for your time!
What country do you live in?
- india
- the netherlands
- usa
- united states
- canada
- united states of america
- usa
- usa
- canada
- usa
Your living area?
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Other option
- i live in a suburban town - a town outside a city. specifically, i live approximately 40 miles away from washington, dc.
Do you believe that light pollution is a burning problem?
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Have you ever:
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How does your government act towards reducing light pollution?
- don't know
- they don't react. highway lights go out at night, but that's to save energy. the netherlands, being so densely populated, might find it hard to do something about light pollution.
- reducing light pollution is not a priority for our governments, both local and national.
- not at all. i live in houston and there is barely any regulation to speak of.
- not that i know of.
- i haven't seen the government say anything about light pollution.
- pretty sure they don't do anything.
- i don't know, honestly. it doesn't seem to be a priority.
- i'm not sure.
- i genuinely don't know if my government does anything about it, or cares at all. i've never heard anything from the government, whether local or national, about light pollution. it's not something that people really talk about.
How much do you know about light pollution? What are your thoughts on this topic?
- don't know
- it makes me feel sad that i've never seen the night sky in its full glory because of the light pollution. it would be nice if the lights could be dimmed a bit; a lot of light is produced by greenhouses in the surrounding countryside here. it would already be a great improvement if they could find some way to prevent the light from escaping (e.g., using some kind of curtain for the whole greenhouse at night).
- light pollution is increasing as lightbulbs are switched over to leds, which are more efficient but brighter at the same time. my university has been adding more lights to the campus and now it’s as bright as a cloudy day at nighttime. student safety is important, but the lights go every which way! i feel that if we had fewer lights that were strategically placed, safety would still be increased and we could be able to see more stars.
- i first learned about it in a high school science class, when we went stargazing and had to travel way out of the city to even see any stars. i saw the galaxy for the first time last summer, when i was camping in west texas where there is an observatory so there is no light pollution at all. the skies were so beautiful i cried. we should reduce light pollution if only to preserve this beauty (maybe people will be less egotistical if they can look up and see how small they really are compared to the universe?) but also because all this excess light completely deregulates everybody’s biology. it decreases the quality of our sleep, we are more stressed and less healthy, and the same thing happens to animals. the effects of light pollution are much larger and much more urgent than people tend to notice.
- honestly, not nearly as much as i should! but growing up in nature on a farm, living in a city, and then moving to a different farm in nature, i always see the difference firsthand and notice how i feel as well. it's something people should be aware of and try to reduce whenever possible!
- i know way too much about light pollution, and i have a lot of thoughts. as an astronomy major, light pollution is the bane of my existence. it prevents me from seeing the stars, which makes me sad and makes it harder to do science. i could and have literally gone off for hours about this topic. flooding the sky with unnecessary light is preventing people from being able to see what should be the most accessible natural wonder of the world.
- from a scientific perspective, i don't know very much; but i live in houston, texas (an absolutely enormous city, in terms of size) and i know that i have to get at least an hour or two outside of the city to do any quality stargazing.
- from experience, i know that it's much easier to see the stars in a town of 5,000 people or in an uninhabited part of the southwestern desert than it is in a big city. i also know that light pollution interferes with sea turtle nesting. i like seeing the stars at night, so i'm in favor of reducing light pollution.
- i think about it when i walk home at night and can look out over the city from the bridge near my house; i can often see a glow or haze around the taller buildings downtown, especially if it’s misty out. i can usually see the moon, but i see airplane lights more often than real stars.
- i know a fair amount, and it's something i'm really passionate about. light pollution is a waste of energy, and it's bad for the environment, as well as a nuisance for stargazers and astronomers. i've been interested in astronomy since i was a child, and seeing the sky grow brighter every year, and the stars fainter, has been a difficult and emotional thing for me. it makes it harder to sleep, it's bad for the local wildlife, and even though my street doesn't have streetlights, the pollution from surrounding areas is enough to block out probably 80% of the visible stars. i'm glad i can still see constellations, but sometimes even that gets difficult. i wish this was a more well-known issue, because it kills me that this problem isn't even necessary in the first place - if folks covered lights properly, we could darken the skies dramatically. but with new led streetlights (and lighted parking lots) going up all the time, it seems like an issue that's almost entirely unknown, at least to the people who install such features. before covid-19 hit this year, i was planning to go camping near spruce knob in west virginia, so that i could see the stars. i hope to still do that, if not this year, then next. however long it takes, i need to see the stars again - the last time i was somewhere really dark was five years ago, and i need to see the stars. the darkest i can get to within an hour and a half's drive of me is a 4 on the bortle scale, and even though that's so much better than where i live, it's still not nearly as good as i know it could be. for as long as humanity has been around, we've always had the stars - to navigate by, to study, to admire. i think it's heartbreaking that we've almost entirely given up on that - at least, in my country we have. and if i can't help people change things where i currently live, i plan to move somewhere dark, maybe in the national radio quiet zone. i can't live without the stars. i just feel like humans weren't meant to live like this - only rarely seeing the stars. we've lost something important, and it's time we get it back.