Light Pollution Reflection / Refraction Number 1

Posted on July 31, 2007

WARNING:

I guarantee my reflections and refractions will create controversy and confrontation; and quite likely I'll step on many toes, but it's time to be brutally honest. So if you are thin-skinned proceed accordingly.

LIGHT POLLUTION DELUSIONS

Let's Stir Some Stew

IT'S time to stir some stew and end our light pollution delusions!

FOR more than 20 years astronomers have sought the solution to light pollution.

OH, yes, I know, we've won a few bantam battles here and there over the years, but... Tell me, what have we really accomplished? Is the night sky darker now than it was in the year 2000? 1996? 1986? Or are we just randomly poking sticks at bad nighttime lighting?

TRUE, a few thousand dues-paying, dark-sky disciples belong to organizations; but is the sky darker? NO! Indeed, tonight, fewer people will see fewer stars in fewer places than 20 years ago, whilst celestial whitewashing accelerates, unaltered, unchallenged, unabated! In fact, light pollution provides a en-light-ening metaphor for the ever accelerating rate that the universe continues to expand.

I'M a lifelong astronomer and retired high school earth science teacher who passionately promised my students on my last day that I’d spend my last days on Earth doing more than bellyache (as many astronomers do) about light pollution. For at least eight years, now, I’ve been wondering why we’re not getting anywhere in our quest for dark skies, why our current strategies are unsuccessful. Now, as blindness and other health issues close in on me, the future is suddenly crystal clear; and I’m not leaving without a fight, a battle the likes of which I can only hope will create intense controversy and confrontation!

NOTHING else has worked!

I know what I write might sound bellicose and bombastic, but it’s time we astronomers face the harsh reality that we have failed, miserably, to take back the night, to take back the starry night sky! Worse, we seem content to simply stay the course, to do nothing different, to remain complacent and confident that our dark sky organizations will get the job done!

POINT blank: Neither staying the course nor cutting and running are options.

AT the current rate of celestial whitewashing using our present strategies and methods, the Milky Way will be extinct over all of America by 2020! I refuse to accept celestial extinction!

WE must press forward with all possible dispatch with nothing short of a Dark Sky Revolution!

WHAT will it take for you to step out of the crowd of complacent astronomers and stargazers and ignite the revolution?

JOIN THE DISCUSSION with your own reflections and refractions. Just click on my e-mail address below and have at it! I will not sell or give your e-mail address to anyone. Your reflections and refractions will be placed under the link to the left labeled "Fan Mail - Hate Mail." I may edit comments I place there, but I will be careful to retain your words wherever possible.

NO EXCUSES! NO EXCEPTIONS! NO COMPROMISES!