There’s been a lot of disagreement, even among environmentalists, about how effective Earth Hour really is in sending a message about the need to fight global warming. But regardless of whether you feel it’s an important and powerful symbolic act or think it does more harm than good, one thing is clear when viewing the dramatic Earth Hour photos from around the world: light pollution is out of control.
Boston.com has an incredible series of images depicting cities from Hong Kong to Las Vegas going dark, showing before-and-after photos that make you realize how alarmingly bright most cities are. And, most of these lights aren’t necessarily adding to safety – they’re simply for looks.
When you click on the images on the Boston.com site, you can see the difference between the city being fully lit and when a number of key lights were turned off during Earth Hour. Check out how much the sky darkens when the lights are turned off.
Light pollution isn’t just a nuisance for our eyes; it’s an environmental issue. National Geographic explains:
We’ve lit up the night as if it were an unoccupied country, when nothing could be further from the truth. Among mammals alone, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species it acts as a magnet, a process being studied by researchers such as Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, co-founders of the Los Angeles-based Urban Wildlands Group. The effect is so powerful that scientists speak of songbirds and seabirds being “captured” by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms, circling and circling in the thousands until they drop. Migrating at night, birds are apt to collide with brightly lit tall buildings; immature birds on their first journey suffer disproportionately.
Light pollution has disturbed precisely timed biological behavior, affecting migration in some species and causing others to sing at unnatural times. Nesting sea turtles are confused by artificial light, and nocturnal animals have become more visible to predators.
And yet, Earth Hour has proven how easy it is to remedy these problems – with the flip of a switch. Why should the Syndey Opera House be fully illuminated at all hours of the night? Why must so many street lights be designed in such a way that they light up the sky instead of the ground? Reducing light pollution doesn’t mean we all need to sit around in the dark. It’s just about smarter use of illumination.
I can’t put it any better than National Geographic’s Verlyn Klinkenborg:
Living in a glare of our own making, we have cut ourselves off from our evolutionary and cultural patrimony—the light of the stars and the rhythms of day and night. In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead.
Link [Boston.com] via [Ecorazzi] + [National Geographic]
