The night skies are not as dark as you think. Light pollution covers most of the populated areas of the planet, and then some. Have you ever wondered why you can’t see the Big Dipper? It’s basically poor lighting design. Most of the beneficial illumination that we need to navigate around after sunset, shoots skyward and obscures the starry night. If that wasn’t bad enough, according to National Geographic Magazine, “light is a powerful biological force, (and) on many species it acts as a magnet.” This means not only does light pollution affect the aesthetic appeal of our nighttime skies, but many migrating birds traveling at night collide into brightly lit buildings. They are also drawn by the lighthouse effect of off-shore drilling platforms, where large flocks circle the structures until they drop into the sea from exhaustion. Humanity has lit up the night as if the bogeyman was about to invade our homes during our sleep. This form of pollution is the easiest to pull the plug on, if not for the romantic starry nights, but for our fine feathered friends in our trust.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under clean skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.