Our Vanishing Night by Verlyn Klinkernborg
Our Vanishing Night by Verlyn Klinkernborg is an intriguing read on light pollution. As humans, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in the sunlight. Adaptation to light is a fundamental evolutionary fact, even though most of us may disagree. Yet it’s the only way to explain why we have engineered the night to receive light leading to light pollution. This paper will highlight some of the effects of light pollution.
Light pollution changes some aspects of life, such as migration, reproduction, and feeding. Light pollution is mostly the result of bad lighting design. Bad lighting design allows artificial light to shine outward and upward into the sky instead of focusing it downward where it is needed. Ill-designed lighting washes out the darkness of night and consequently changes the light levels and light rhythms to which most of the life forms, including humans, are adapted. When human light spills into the natural world, aspects of life such as migration, reproduction, and feeding are affected. Amongst mammals, the number of nocturnal species is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force, and on many species acts as a magnet. The impact is so immense that scientists talk of songbirds and seabirds being trapped by searchlights on land or by the light from gas flares on marine oil platforms circling in thousands until they drop. Migrating birds at night may collide with tall lit buildings; immature birds may suffer disproportionately.
Light pollution leads to loss of the original glory of an unlighted night. Most of humanity lives under intersecting domes of reflected, refracted light, of scattering rays from overlit cities and suburb. In the South Atlantic, the lighting from a single fishing fleet, luring fish with metal halide lamps, can be seen from space burning brighter than Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro. In most cities, the sky looks as if it starless. For the majority of the city dwellers, the bright stars, the planets, galaxies in darkness is almost beyond their memory. The night is in light up as if it were a vast empty country.
Light pollution has exposed some forms of life to danger. Insects cluster around street lights and become easily attacked by their predators. In some Swiss valleys, the European horseshoe bat began to vanish with the installation of streetlights. Other nocturnal rodents such as desert rodents forage more cautiously under the permanent full moon of light pollution as they fear their predators. Some birds, such as blackbirds sing at irregular hours due to artificial lighting. Artificially long days and short nights have induced early breeding in birds as more extended daylight longer feeding. Frogs and toads inhabiting near highly lit highways suffer nocturnal light levels million times brighter than usual light changes nearly every aspect of their lives, including their nighttime breeding choruses.
Light pollution disrupts the biological welfare of human beings. Earlier it was thought that light pollution only affects astronomers who need to see the night. However, like most other creatures, we need darkness. Darkness helps improve our biological welfare. The regular waking and sleeping, one of the circadian rhythms in humans, is similar to the periodic oscillations of light on the earth. These rhythms are fundamental to our welfare.
In conclusion,light pollution has disrupted the human cycle of waking up and sleeping,has exposed forms of life to danger, and has led to the loss of the natural darkness. Further, it has altered the presence of humans and animals in equal measures as humans work across the hour, and birds hardly sleep. Hence, I agree with Klinkernborg that we ‘are trapped’ by light pollution and have lost sight of our actual universe, just like the frogs near inhabiting near lights and the horseshoe bats nearing extinction.