Light Pollution

Today is World Earth Day and I thought I would write a post on of the issues that none of the Political parties have never, until now, taken a serious interest in is light pollution caused by street lights, advertising signs, the spotlighting of buildings etc. For some reason they haven't seen it as an issue, but the fact is light leaking out into space is just wasted light, and as such it is wasted energy.

The photo above was taken from space and it show the extent of the problem in the United Kingdom. The  orange light is the lights of towns and cities being sent out into space which also pollutes the atmosphere making it difficult to spot stars and consolations in the night sky from the ground. It is a problem that both the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Campaign for Dark Skies has been campaigning about for years.

It is estimated that less than half the population in the United Kingdom cannot see many stars because the night skies are still "saturated" with light pollution. Much of this light pollution comes from street lights which costs councils £500m per year and makes up as much as 10% of each council's carbon emissions. Although some councils have tested schemes in the past to reduce the lighting when they are not needed these have never proved universally popular.

The situation is now so bad that it is estimated that just over 2% of the population enjoy truly dark skies. It means that many of the children growing up today will never have the privilege of seeing the milky way or the shear beauty of seeing millions of stars above them in the night sky. For those studying the stars and the planets it is a complete nightmare. Even where I live you can see the orange glow of the two nearby towns which makes it difficult to see some of the stars to the south and north of the village. Even so the improvement of what I can see in the night sky compared to when I lived in a city is amazing.

At last the Government have started to listen and national guidance has been issued to encourage local planning authorities to reduce light pollution through design improvements. However this covers new planing and it could be years before existing lighting is modified or upgrade to those laid out in the guidelines. There are cases where lighting is needed for safety reasons but that doesn't mean that we need glaring lights everywhere.

The evidence shows that we need to take action now to roll back the spread of light pollution. Not only it is it a problem of not seeing the night sky but the lost light is a waste of energy, it disrupts wildlife and affect people's sleeping patterns. Lets hope with all the new building work around the country that the councils take account of the new national guidelines and things are not made worse.