MYTH #2: LIGHT POLLUTION ONLY AFFECTS ASTRONOMERS
Light pollution affects all of us. It robs the
professional astronomer of his or her livelihood and hinders the amateur's
enjoyment of their hobby. It deprives us all of one of nature's grandest
wonders -- the night sky. Many persons who claim this is of no importance have
never gone far out of town to see what they are missing. Those who grow up in
an urban environment may never see the Milky Way. How can someone miss
something he has never seen? The loss of this part of nature desensitizes us to
other insults upon the environment. This is like saying the loss of a virgin
forest is of no concern because most people won't get to see it anyway, and
there are plenty of trees for lumber. The loss of wildflowers, polar bears,
wolves, whales, and other threatened species, to be honest, won't affect the
average person. Their loss only directly impacts biologists, or those more in
tune with the natural environment than in the environment we humans create.
After all, humans have done very well without mammoths, mastodons, and
passenger pigeons.
However,
no one supports the extinction of magnificent animals. Why should we permit the
loss of our skies? Not only does light pollution dim the stars for the
astronomer, but it dims them for all persons. Everyone has a right to the
stars. Light pollution takes away one of our most ancient heritages and it
represents visible destruction of the environment in several ways: the dome of
light hanging over most cities blots out the stars; electricity is generated
and wasted to light the night sky -- light needs to be on the ground not up in
the sky; the wasted electricity represents wasteful burning of coal, oil, and
natural gas; the byproducts of these wasteful burnings show up as acid rain,
smoke, and carbon dioxide emission; strip mining and underground mines ravish
the land to produce the coal for the wasteful burnings; runoffs from this
mining pollutes rivers and streams. Thus, light pollution does far more than
inconvenience a few astronomers. It is a most harmful assault upon our
environment. It affects us all, and all of us ought to be concerned about it.