Living in the city, light pollution drives me a little bit crazy. I don't understand why so many people seem to be OK with losing our ability to see the stars... It also implies squandered electricity (and money).
When I stayed with my mom for a week in NYC, I was shocked by how bright the sky at night was. Literally it glowed orange. I felt like I was in the D'ni caverns from Myst, and it really wore on me. My best guess is that one just stops looking up after a while. Or, as a sibling comment notes, you look down at the city as your new sky.
Cities can take on a sort of self-importance, an introspective ego, anyhow, since there's so much available that you can be permanently distracted from looking outward or upward. Can't say it wasn't a fun place, but it's not my cuppa joe. But I could easily imagine a [native?] city dweller feeling like they're not missing anything.
[EDIT: I guess I just figure some people live in the city because it gives them everything they need. But it certainly made me feel like I lost my sky. I'd be curious to know if you grew up in the city; so far, it seems like that feeling of loss or wrongness is just for people who grew up outside them.]
I grew up in a very small town and I used to sit very long periods under the stars doing nothing. It was kind of meditation. I moved to the city when I went to uni and started missing it more and more; you hardly could see anything there and it didn't give me the same rest sitting outside. A while ago I looked for a new place to live after the city and I picked that place specifically based on viewing stars as one of the highest priorities on my list. I live in a village deep in the mountains; there is no light in the village at night, there are no cities nearby and the rest is shielded by the mountains. If you have never seen something like this you definitely are missing something worthwhile and yes, I can see the milky way, almost every night.
This is in the mountains in the south of Spain. The village I live in has 40 people and they kill the streetlights after 11 pm and the nearest 'big' village has 200 people and they kill almost all the lights as well but I cannot see that anyway even if there would be enough light.
> I don't understand why so many people seem to be OK with losing our ability to see the stars
Honest question: why shouldn't they be okay with it?
I was a Boy Scout and I saw the stars at night during camp outs. I've seen the night's sky from the middle of the New Mexico desert. It was very pretty, but I've seen it.
It's not that I don't have a sense of wonder. Heck, I'm a post-doctoral researcher in physics and I've been trying to teach myself cosmology as a hobby. Yet, from my perspective, being able to see the stars every night like being able to see Niagara Falls every night. It's something that you should certainly do once and I don't begrudge those who want it part of their daily life, but I don't think that it needs to be the default option.
You seem to disagree, so I'm wondering what it is that I'm missing.
Well, seeing the stars everywhere at night is the default and our activities are preventing it. So I don't think it's quite the same as seeing Niagara Falls. Light pollution is a solved problem and solving it has other potential benefits (like better sleep at night).
But no one cares. Why don't they care? I don't know. For me, the inability to see the stars at night is like not being able to see the sun during the day. It's like every night is cloudy.
Well, not everyone is going to have the same level of awe or interest for any given phenomenon, obviously. It just strikes me as kind of sad that so many people today live their lives without even realizing what'd be visible directly overhead if only it wasn't so obscured by light pollution. At least you do realize, and have seen it.
I think it's unfair to kids in particular that they're missing out on this. (I realize there are worse "accident of birth" things to worry about, like safety and shelter and having enough to eat, but I'm trying to stay on-topic.)
I don't know... not being able to see the stars strikes me as one or two steps away from living underground, or never looking up.
Because Niagara Falls is thousands of miles away, fixed in size and in one place. The sky is everywhere and infinite. That we can't see the sky is a far more singular deal.
It's grounding and humbling. I look up at the stars every single time I'm outside at night, even just walking from the car in the driveway to the front door. The scale and history is unfathomable. I never get sick of it. I think about past generations from thousands of years ago and how at that time they would be lying around a fire and what they would've been thinking.
That opportunity to look up and see stars should be a natural night state for us and our children.
Unless they're aiming that 100% LED street lighting where it won't wind up in the sky, I don't see how that'd make a difference. And street lighting isn't the sole source of light pollution - in many cities, buildings are lit from the outside at night with big floodlights pointing upwards. I'd imagine that has a fairly big effect on light pollution.
Fwiw many cities are switching to fully shielded led street lights. They started doing this where I live (Cincinnati) and the change has been fairly drastic.
If you're purchasing outdoor area or street LED lighting from any reputable OEM, they will comply with Dark Sky-friendly BUG (Backlight/Uplight/Glare) ratings.
