March 2025 By WEBB Member Nan Lee
If you are outside at night here on North Haven, you learn quickly to appreciate the beauty of the dark night sky, and yet the World Economic Forum estimates that in the twenty-five years leading up to 2017, light pollution around the world has increased by at least forty-nine percent. One example can show us the power of that increase.
In 1994, an earthquake left residents of Los Angeles without electricity for about twenty four hours. That night local emergency centers received many reports of “a strange, giant, silvery cloud” hovering in the dark sky. With complete sincerity, citizens were reporting their first sighting of our Milky Way Galaxy, believing they were observing signs of “alien” presence. The usual ‘skyglow’ that normally brightened the night and obscured the stars, disappeared briefly, and the awe-inspiring splendor of our tiny part of the cosmos was revealed to the confusion of thousands of Californians.
Globally, domes of diffused light cover all urban areas. In our nation, Washington, D.C. is the worst city for light pollution while the neon lights and illuminated electronic signboards of Las Vegas can be seen from within the boundaries of eight of our National Parks. This pollution is serious enough that The National Park Service has made maintaining a dark sky a policy priority. The National Wildlife Federation is also concerned about the negative effects of light pollution.
Trees bud and leaf out earlier than they have evolved to do because of too much artificial light. The nighttime migration of birds is disrupted so much that birds have been known to circle lighted skyscrapers until daybreak, losing up to half their body weight in one night. Confused by nighttime light, birds can also be lured into a maze of high rise buildings and often die. Artificial light at night disorients migrating birds like the White-throated Sparrow and the Hermit Thrush. Female fireflies fail to return the flashes of males, and their disrupted circadian rhythms lead immediately to a huge decline in the population. The hatchlings of sea turtles head for the bright lights of highways rather than towards the fainter illumination of the ocean. Frogs and salamanders, moths, caterpillars and nighttime predators’ behavior is disrupted.
Human circadian clocks are also unbalanced by light clutter causing a drop in the production of melatonin, an increase in insomnia, anxiety, stress, and headaches. Scientists studied the health of people who do nighttime shift work and discovered that the consistent disruption of sleep/wake cycles is a serious health problem, serious enough that the American Medical Association has endorsed and supported efforts to control light pollution.
We know that too much light at night disrupts ecological functions. We know it is a growing problem and it is a problem that affects all living things from trees to salamanders to human beings. Unlike other difficult to solve environmental quagmires, however, there are simple, easily implemented solutions which can be introduced through the better design of lighting and shielding outdoor lighting (street lights and parking lot lighting) so that light is directed down towards the earth and does not spill out and upwards into the night sky. North Haven has recently completed the replacement of the town’s streetlights with eighteen-watt LED bulbs whose light illuminates what needs to be clear for safety but no more than that. Elsewhere, cities have saved the lives of thousands of migrating birds simply by dimming or turning off the nighttime lighting of office buildings.
On a clear summer’s night on North Haven, a person can see over 2,500 stars and planets in the dark night sky. The wonder that we felt as children is still available to us and to children here who can continue to build their understanding of themselves and our world by lying on their backs in a hammock on a dark night, dreaming and imagining a thriving, connected, world.
Nan Lee
If this is a topic of interest to you, we will be posting more information on the Resources page of this website in the next months.