Electric light: an environmental disaster

We know that global industrialization has created the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. We know what needs to change - but globally glaring 24/7 lights are rarely in the news.

Allow me to start by giving you a visual sense of what this is all about. Welcome to Europe by night. Italy, England, Germany, clusters here and there - a huge one in and around Moscow. I produced this map with the aid of the Light Pollution Map. I recommend you follow that link and play around a bit. Find your neck of the woods, explore the world, it is - dare I say it - enlightening.

While this might look merely interesting, even pretty, it doesn’t just show how immensely populated certain parts of the world are, it also depicts environmental disasters of immense proportions.

The problem is, most people aren’t even aware of this.

There are organizations who have alerted to the dangers of light pollution for decades. The International Dark-Sky Association, DarkSky, advocates for change. Their mission is “to restore the nighttime environment and protect communities and wildlife from the harmful effects of light pollution through outreach, advocacy, and conservation.”

The work they do is astounding - and yet, when it comes to environmental news, the subject of light pollution lives mostly under the radar. Excessive electric light everywhere and all the time is hazardous to our human health - and it is deadly for wildlife. We think ourselves an advanced species. Biologically speaking, we’ve not advanced. We may have come up with lots of toys/inventions, but our bodies are essentially functioning just as they have in ancient times.

The human body

We need sleep, we all know that. But not every sleep is good sleep. Way back then, our ancestors lived with the natural light and in the darkness, they slept. In darkness, the body produces melatonin (this hormone’s release is inhibited in the presence of light). More light, less melatonin - which leads to bad sleep, fatigue, headaches, stress, anxiety … you’ve experienced all of those. But you attributed troubles to a rough day, stress at work, a late night, too much booze, too much food, etc. All of those have an impact, of course - but have you thought about the impact of light?

👉 Light pollutions affects human health

National Geographic reports that the American Medical Association now supports efforts to control light pollution. The studies are in, and clear. Too much electric light is bad for us - and you better believe that too much electric light is all the more powerfully felt by wildlife. By the way - blue light: Everyone knows that you shouldn’t stare into screens for about an hour before sleep … and yet most people do that, of course. Blue light - mobile phones, iPads, laptops, PCs and LEDs - have been shown to negatively impact our melatonin levels.

Wildlife

Animals migrating by moonlight, get confused, crash, die. Insects in the billions die every night when drawn to artificial light. Those insects were intended to deliver services to the environment, for example as bird food. It’s been studied that birds in cities start their morning songs hours before those in the wild, disrupting every natural rhythm. Artificial light affects predators and prey. DarkSky writes that, “Sea turtles live in the ocean but hatch at night on the beach. Hatchlings find the sea by detecting the bright horizon over the ocean. Artificial lights draw them away from the ocean. In Florida alone, millions of hatchlings die this way every year.”

👉 Light pollution harms wildlife and ecosystems

According to research scientist Christopher Kyba, for nocturnal animals “the introduction of artificial light probably represents the most drastic change human beings have made to their environment. Predators use light to hunt, and prey species use darkness as cover. Near cities, cloudy skies are now hundreds or even thousands of times brighter than they were 200 years ago. We are only beginning to learn what a drastic effect this has had on nocturnal ecology.”

👉 “How rewilding the night sky can provide major benefits to migratory birds and other species” Rewilding Earth podcast with Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky.

What’s being done

DarkSky certifies ‘Dark Sky Places’ and by now there are 200 such places, protecting 160’000 square kilometers of land and night skies in 22 countries on 6 continents. They also work with manufacturers to get them to deliver dark-sky-friendly outdoor lighting. They advocate with officials to focus on night sky protection and yes, they educate, educate, educate.

The National Park Service has made dark night skies a priority. They have a Night Skies Team that monitors night sky brightness in a hundred park - and nearly every park shows some light pollution.

“We’ve got whole generations of people in the United States who have never seen the Milky Way. It’s a big part of our connection to the cosmos—and it’s been lost,” said Chris Elvidge, a scientist with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.

What we can individually do is to reduce outdoor lights and close blinds or curtains to keep the light inside and let it be night outside for the critters out there. By the way, the value of properly shielding outside lights is nicely illustrated in this two-minute clip:

The big picture isn’t pretty

There’s the tracking and the science and the advocacy and the education and the actions of no doubt a considerable number of people … there’s all that on one hand, and on the other there is the above image. We have been led into a 24/7 economy where we cannot think of it differently anymore. We’re used to lights on at all times. We’re used to glaring lights that give us pretty views of castles and churches and towers and other big structures all night long. We’re used to blazingly bright cities with neon lights and billboards - Times Square-style - the more and more even rural places are polluted with an increasing amount of night-lit advertising. Everything needs to be lit and sometimes we say it’s for safety reasons (as the above clip shows, that can be done smartly, with better effect and with no sky glow pollution).

Yes, there are valuable efforts that make a big difference to people and wildlife in those places. But overall? There is no indication that we, our species as a mass, is anywhere near willing to give an inch. We want comfort and convenience - we want it all, all the time. And so the lights are on, glaring, blazing, cluttering and glowing at all times. It’s bad for all of us. But so are fossil fuels, and air travel, and fast food, and plastics, and, and, and. We just keep going and we’re just going to make ourselves - and all of nature - sicker as we go.

I’d said it before: I’m hugely hopeful about the amazing powers and efforts of individuals - and I’m just as deeply pessimistic about humanity as a mass. Most will keep the lights on until, that is, something forces the change. That may come in the form of natural or manmade disasters, or it may come in the form of courageous government policy changes. But I won’t hold my breath on anything sweeping, anything other than token offerings.

Reconnecting with nature

Kris Tompkins of the Tompkins Foundation said that “You can’t protect a place unless you understand it. You can’t love it until you know it.” People need to reconnect with nature to want to protect it. And reconnecting means being there, experiencing it, seeing it - whether that is a seascape, landscape, flora or fauna - or the starry skies.

The nature pyramid gives us a good sense of what’s required for our physical and mental health - and when we act on the nature pyramid’s suggestions, we’ll also start appreciating, caring, protecting. Maybe a light will go on in our head that’ll lead us to turn off the lights outside.

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