Light Pollution Reflection / Refraction Number 3

Posted on September 18, 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--take your hand off the mouse and back away from the computer.

IT JUST NEVER ENDS! Part 1

LET'S get right to it!

YES, I know I run the risk of offending astronomers by growling about light pollution, but

1. we must face the fact that light pollution intensifies every night

2. our efforts to prevent and control it are failing, and

3. most importantly, we must change the way we attack the problem of light pollution.

WHY does light pollution exist? THE SYSTEM. That's right, THE SYSTEM.

ALRIGHT, Buckle Up Bubbas, for a 200 mph, wheel-to-wheel, bumper-to-bumper reality ride 'round a racetrack. Oh, and don't forget your helmet and steel-toed boots--I'm sure to run over your toes.

JUST what is THE SYSTEM?

IT'S difficult to define, describe and delineate, isn't it? But we all know what it is. Ask anyone to “Define THE SYSTEM,” and the answer will immediately appear in their glazed eyes.

OF course, THE SYSTEM has much to offer, but your high school American history and government (gu’mint) courses and textbooks likely provided and promoted a deeply whitewashed version of it (gotta keep those Texas Textbook Guardians of ‘Merica, happy, you know!).

A philosophical friend's phrase for times like this is, “It Just Never Ends!” (IJNE! for short.) He's the same guy who wheedles me with, ”Must I do everything?” (R&R, August 8, 2007).

EARLY on, I was a full-fledged, fully functioning, fully accepting, fully trusting, fully respecting, firm believer in THE SYSTEM, too; that is, until I worked in and for THE SYSTEM and later choked down full doses of THE SYSTEM in a foolish and failed attempt to bring about progressive change in my own community through THE SYSTEM! IJNE!

NO matter how much you / we pretend to believe in THE SYSTEM, you know, the one owned and operated by the powers-that-be (PTB); and no matter how long or how hard we astronomers work within it to bring about substantive night-light changes, we will fail and nothing will change. IJNE!

LOOK, THE SYSTEM was and is designed by the PTB for the PTB. IJNE!

WE astronomers (and most everyone else not a part of the PTB) are nothing more than pesky little gnats, nerds and nuts (eco-wackos) to the PTB. Remember, the PTB control most of the communities in 'Merica (and America itself) through their:

1. appointments to civic boards and commissions

2. elections(?) to city councils, etc.

3. eminence in civic organizations--sham fronts for "free" market proselytizing and propaganda

4. Chambers of Commerce--business bullies whose only purpose is to keep that economic engine of development chuggin' on down the tracks at full-throttle

5. corporate-controlled media--cheerleaders for the Cs of C..."keep those business adverts comin' in boys"

6. developers--thoughtless thugs

7. real estate moguls and mavens

8. progrowth and prodevelopment mayors and other civic officials...city managers, etc.

9. and all the other PTB, so-called movers and shakers, whose true religion is IJNE-growth and business. IJNE!

HISTORICALLY, from the first landing of Christ-opher Columbus through today, the local PTB exists to support the PTB. IJNE!

FOR the most part, your community and mine are nothing more than fully-owned, government-subsidized, subsidiaries of countrywide, corporate-dominated groups: greedy girls and guys who belong to the Church of GOD--Grow Or Die--super-duper, uber-capitalists who actually believe the free market system they use and abuse to their advantage and aggrandizement is, well, "free." The answer to the question on the famous Brit-com, "Are You Being Served": "Are you free?" is NO! There is nothing free about the so-called free-market system. IJNE!

OF course, the PTB love to use the word progress: "Oh, we must progress! We're good 'Mericans...progress, progress, progress!" But THE SYSTEM's definition of progress is to keep growing, acquiring, developing, building, sprawling, expanding, and everywhere, shredding ecosystems and slaughtering wildlife, whilst using phrases nowadays like "responsible growth," "reasonable growth," "restrained growth," and their biggest lie, "green growth," to echo their "eco-friendly environmental concerns." IJNE!

SO, how can astronomers hope to rescue the Milky Way from light pollution as long as THE SYSTEM exists?

TRULY, I want to be optimistic, I want to believe that someday soon--say, before the year 2020--light pollution will no longer be a problem; but the last 20 years of effort certainly gives me pause.

SOMETIMES I think: It’ll just never...

PART Two, coming soon: What else causes light pollution?

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NO EXCUSES! NO EXCEPTIONS! NO COMPROMISES!