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from
Holt Times Daily, May 7, 2005
from Seeing Stars Over Light Pollution
An Editorial
by Julian West, Editor-in-Chief
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Houston—Marc lives in a sunny city in the southwestern United States. After sunset, though, his parents will not let him ride his bike, jog to a friend's house three streets away, or even walk his dog. Marc's parents say the neighborhood is too dark. One evening a neighbor was robbed walking home from a bus stop. She could not describe the mugger, even though street lights line every block of her route. Unfortunately, the lights are fitted with sodium-vapor lamps, and she could barely see in their dim, pinkish glow.
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 Marc's neighbor became a victim of the near-useless lamps that her city installed. The city is required by law to combat light pollution with dimmer street lights. Actions taken by city and state legislators to prevent light pollution are well meant, but so far they cause bigger problems than they solve. Until better solutions are found, prevention of light polution should not be required by law.
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It is true that light pollution is a serious problem. Astronomers have discussed it with the United Nations. They point out that even the most advanced telescopes work poorly when city lights keep the night sky bright. Nighttime satellite photos show the United States clearly outlined in light. Cities, suburbs, and highways cast their combined glow into space. All this brightness, scientists warn, overwhelms the fainter light signals reaching Earth from the rest of the universe. The light also shows a wasteful use of precious fossil fuels.
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In the Middle East, religious leaders find that city lights make it hard to see the pale sliver of new moon that signals the start of the Muslim holy month. In the Arctic, researchers find that native people are less likely to teach star-related cultural traditions to the young because street lights now blot out important stars. Since star lore is central to their culture, their traditional system of passing knowledge from generation to generation is at risk.
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