[AZ-Observing] NYTimes.com Article: Heavens Above, Parking Lot Below

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Interesting Dark-Skies op-ed in today's New York Times.

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Heavens Above, Parking Lot Below

August 30, 2003
 By CHARLES LOCKWOOD 




 

TOPANGA, Calif. 

This week Mars was closer to Earth than it had been for
60,000 years. But if you ventured out at night to look for
ice caps and canals, chances are you saw only a slightly
brighter and more pinkish smudge than usual. That's because
99 percent of Americans (and Europeans) live in places
tainted by light pollution, according to NASA. Two-thirds
of American homes no longer have a view of silky strands of
the Milky Way - we've "lost" 2,000 stars. 

Light pollution comes in three basic types: skyglow light
trespass and glare. Skyglow is the one that drowns out the
stars. It is caused by poorly designed, unshielded and
improperly aimed fixtures, like street lamps and billboards
with bottom-mounted lights that "uplight" the
advertisement. As the light floods upward, it reflects off
airborne dust and moisture particles, obscuring the
heavens. Thanks to skyglow, the 100-inch telescope at Mount
Wilson outside Los Angeles - where the astronomer Edwin
Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding - has been
rendered virtually useless for deep-sky observations. 

Light trespass hits closer to home: it is light that
crosses property lines, like a neighbor's security
floodlight that illuminates your backyard. Glare is caused
by too much illumination applied to one area, like overly
bright retail signs or high-wattage floodlights along
highways. The American Automobile Association has cited
glare as a contributing factor in traffic accidents. 

Why has America gone night-light crazy? In part, because
fear of the dark is as old as humanity. Now, thanks to Mr.
Edison and the brothers Klieg, the fear of evening crime is
leading us to replace the night with an orange-ish twilight
zone. But do these bright lights make us safer? Only in our
imaginations. The "more light is better" myth has been shot
down in studies done at the Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute and the University of Huddersfield in England,
among others. Overlighting does not reduce crime; it merely
alleviates fear of crime, possibly creating a false sense
of security. Excessive lighting can actually increase
danger because it creates deep shadows where criminals can
lurk. 

Light pollution is also linked to sleep disorders, and it
can disrupt plant and animal life, including the nesting
and hatching patterns of endangered loggerhead turtles on
Florida's beaches. And it is a terrible waste of energy and
money. The International Dark-Sky Association, a
Tucson-based group, estimates that American consumers,
corporations and government agencies waste $2 billion a
year on unneeded lighting. A prime culprit is the 175-watt
mercury vapor lighting that has long been the choice for
parking lots and street lights; the bulbs are cheap, but
they draw a great deal of electricity and shed far more
light than is usually needed. 

Do people really think they need all this light? A study by
the California Energy Commission found that most
respondents wanted outdoor lighting to be only as bright as
the full moonlight, which is about one one-hundredth of a
foot candle (the unit used to measure light intensity). Yet
most parking lots have lighting of 5 to 10 foot candles. 

Some state and local governments have taken notice. Arizona
enacted a light-control law in 1991, and has repeatedly
strengthened it. Ten other states, and a host of towns
ranging from Riverhead, N.Y., to Calabasas, Calif., have
followed suit. Such laws vary, but typically they prohibit
installation of mercury vapor lights, require newly
installed outdoor fixtures to be shielded, and mandate that
older, brighter lights be shut off automatically between,
say, midnight and sunrise. 

What else can be done? Schools, office buildings and
industrial parks can replace their glaring dusk-to-dawn
outdoor lighting with infrared motion sensors that sense
unauthorized visitors and activate floodlights or strobes.
Most important, people can pressure their communities to
enact laws that regulate existing fixtures - calling for
lower-wattage bulbs and shades around fixtures - not just
new ones. 

A generation ago, few Americans thought about excess noise
or fertilizer runoff; most communities today have rules to
fight those types of pollution. Now it's time to recognize
light pollution as a danger to our quality of life and our
pocketbooks. I'd like to see the Milky Way again, wouldn't
you? 

Charles Lockwood is author of "Bricks and Brownstone: The
New York Row House, 1783 to 1929." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/30/opinion/30LOCK.html?ex=1063260485&ei=1&en=f7fba638d0b42aa7


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