DARK SKY MANIFESTO

THERE'S ONLY ONE SOLUTION TO LIGHT POLLUTION:

LIGHTS OFF! - NOW! - FOR LIFE!

NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!

LIGHT pollution is not a very light-hearted issue, especially amongst astronomers, so it’s difficult to make light of it, but I'll try to shine a few beams of humor here and there on the problem. Still, keep in mind that 1. I am unconditionally and uncompromisingly opposed to light pollution, and 2. I am quite likely to step on more than a few toes with my size 14 shoes! So, if you fear for your toes, step back! But before you step away, ask yourself this question... What have the mainstream dark sky organizations done for me lately except take my money?

LESS STARLIGHT AND MORE LIGHT POLLUTION!

THAT’S the legacy of 20-plus years of the same old blah, blah, blah, one-dimensional, linear thinking from your friendly, fund-raising, bureaucratic, hierarchical, dark sky organizations and buttoned-down orthodoxy in glossy astronomy magazines! Even my own website and daily efforts, marked by extraordinary civility and lack of confrontation and controversy for most of the last 10 years, has resulted in very little progress!

POINT blank: will the sky over America be less light polluted tonight than it was 5 years ago? NO! Ten years ago? Yeah, right! Twenty years ago? Dream on!

MEANWHILE, a whole generation of children have matured to adulthood, never seeing a truly pristine dark night sky!

SHOULDN’T 20 years of effort by dark sky organizations and astronomy publications have reduced light pollution at least one percent? I guess not.

DARK sky organizations have tried most of the traditional, conservative, conventional methods to restore dark skies--including the light law gambit--but none of them are working. They’ve exploited the money issue--light pollution wastes billions of buckaroos--Oops, that doesn't work either! They’ve forged alliances with the lighting industry and other corporate entities--Oops, again, no reduction in light pollution. Nope, folks, nothing...NOTHING the old guard, intransigent, stiff-necked, refractory dark sky organizations have done for 20-plus years has worked. And even if any of their wasted efforts had a kernal of hope that they would work, it would take at least 30 or more years before the sky would be dark again. Are you willing to wait that long? I'm not! And neither should you!

AND to the technobuzzards, those folks who think the solution to every problem is MORE technology, more computer programs, more, more, more... (I said I would be stepping on toes), there is no technology--no filter, no imaging system, no computer program, etc.--that will “eliminate” light pollution--not today, not tomorrow, not next year! In short, technology is not the solution to the problem, it IS the problem! Why do you suppose there’s so much light pollution already? Technology! America’s night skies are already so splattered with the hog hockey of wasteful light you’re lucky to see 50 stars on any given clear, moonless night in any community with a population of more than 30,000 people.

AGAIN, point blank: Your night sky is more light polluted tonight than it was 5 years ago!

SO, how long will you be willing to wait for dark skies using the current strategies? 2012? 2020? 2050? By then most astronomers alive today will be ashes or insect- and worm-food, and there’ll be fewer and fewer young folk willing to give astronomy a try!

DO you really believe the current cockamamie, hair-brained schemes and wild-eyed dreams are working?

POINT blank: ENOUGH!

IT’S time to act! To challenge the status quo! Stir some stew! Make waves! Rock the boat! Make a stink! Topple the apple cart! It’s time to get...Radical! Revolutionary! Incendiary!

MOST Americans (not all), especially those tied to the corporate strings couldn’t care less about light pollution or much else except their endless connections to making a profit, celebrity worship, pop culture and daily consumption of corporate crap!

WHAT does light pollution mean to you as an astronomer or stargazer? To most Americans enthralled by the great corporatocracy, light pollution represents progress, development, expansionism, empire, growth, greed, and most of all...MONEY!

IN April 2007, with my health declining, I lumbered across the threshold separating civility and compromise from flat out, full-blown, full-tilt combativeness! I decided someone had to step up and do something different because present and past strategies have not worked!

SOOO..., from now on till death do us part, I'll represent those few astronomers (you?) and nonastronomers who are no longer willing to adopt the old-fashioned dark sky organizations' ways. I’m adopting a damn-the-torpedoes, full-speed-ahead, pedal-to-the-metal, git-‘er-done attitude! The moneyed dark sky organizations and bully-pulpit astronomy magazines have accomplished next to nothing, have had no definitive successes, and since I’m soon worm food, I’m willing to lead the charge! What are the corporate-owned authorities going to do? Cuff me and stuff me in the slammer? Hey, a new experience!

YOU will not find here the same old, tired, banal dark sky hoo-ha that clutters other dark sky websites and sleek, shiny astro-magazines! None of that hog hockey here! We Iowans know all about hog hockey--our state stinks from lagoon-loads of the liquefied rancid swill! Ah, but that’s another issue...

LOOK, it’s time for all of us, not just a few of us, to shout out a high-decibel, no-nonsense, no-compromise, no-exception, no-excuse declaration to every star-slaying business owner and corporate CEO, every civic official who votes for more and brighter lights (to support their cronies in business), and every resident of America who couldn’t care less about starlight, that we will NOT tolerate their star-slaughtering light pollution! These are the uncaring SOBs (Satans of Brightness) who are destroying OUR night sky!

IT’S time to proclaim our dark sky declaration day after day after day, night after night after night, over and over and over and over and over, until the ruthless, star-strangling profit-mongers of corporate America, the Earth-eating land developers, and everyone else in America gets the message and stops assassinating OUR starlight! And we must do this in as many different ways as possible! We need to be stealthy, creative and unpredictable.

IT’S time to incite a full-throttle, full-bore, plugs-out, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, unapologetic Dark Sky Revolution that we enforce resolutely, relentlessly, doggedly every single day and night! No excuses! No exceptions! No compromises!

NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!

IT’S time to stop being insipid, vapid, wishy-washy, wimpy, weenie, wussy, whiny astronomers, wasting our time with watered-down, compromised lighting laws and polite discourse, whimpering, “Oh, pleeeease, won’t you help us save our precious night sky from the horrors of star-strangling light pollution?” It’s time to get our tighty whities unknotted and kick butt!

NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!

AS astronomers what do we have to lose? If we choose to do nothing, or worse--the same old hackneyed things we’ve been doing for 20 years--dark skies over America will be totally extinct in a very few short years! Is that what you want? Is it? WELL, IS IT??

WE astronomers--myself included until April 2007--have become nothing more than a weak-kneed bunch of namby-pamby, pablum-sucking, submissive, sapless, spineless, compliant, docile, tepid, milquetoast, milksop, sadsack sissies! As astronomers, we’ve become vacuous, meek, mollycoddling, pantywaist enablers, who, from the position we’ve assumed, can’t even see the sun, let alone the stars!

SO, get your head out of that place where the sun don’t shine--the CORPORATE SANDPILE--and start fighting back! Let the cow chips fall on the corporate thugs and their wasteful, pretentious outdoor lighting, on the business-promoting civic “officials,” and the developers who exist only to develop all of America for profit, adding thousands of new and brighter lights every single night, all the while causing the extinction of OUR starlight!

WHAT about you? Are you finally enraged enough, finally motivated enough, finally ready to provoke a Dark Sky Revolution tonight where you live and stop depending on the same old hog hockey that’s been the dark sky movement’s trademark for years and years and years and years and years and....?

SORRY for all those bloodied toes out there, but...

NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!

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