When you look up into the night sky, what do you see?

Smog? Eerie light reflecting off clouds? City skylines? A handful of stars? Or not as many stars as you used to?

Milky Way at Night

Oh. Better yet. Do you even look up into the sky anymore? Or do you just go about your day and night, doing what you have to do, without taking the time to admire what and where we come from?

Sadly, even if you do, what you see in the heavens isn’t what it used to be and shame on us, humans who inhabit this wonderful Earth, for making it that way.

I read somewhere that 80 percent of people today have never seen the Milky Way. Eighty percent. I’m one of them. In fact, back in the 1990s when Los Angeles was hit with a blackout, folks called 911 to report strange things overhead. Yeah. Guess what they were seeing for the first time. The Milky Way — and they had no idea what it was.

What NYC skyline would look like without light pollution

I think this is sad. There is so much to our world, and outside of it, that’s breathtaking and beautiful and that serves as a reminder of our place in this universe. It seems to me that we’ve become so immersed in ourselves that we’ve forgotten where we come from. Maybe even why we’re here.

On many levels, this isn’t a good thing. Not just because we’re more human-focused now than we ever have been before, but because artificial light and light at night (also known as light pollution) disrupts our normal body cycles. All this stuff that we’ve created to light our way, to showcased advertising, to make things more visible is, well, unhealthy. It suppresses our body’s ability to produce melatonin, a powerful anti-inflammatory that we need so that important things can happen on the cellular level. And that makes us get sick more frequently. Light pollution also disrupts our sleep, our behavior, our health. And, it disrupts all the other life on our planet, too.

NYC Skyline at Night

City skylines, like NYC, are amazing to look at. But they come with a precious cost. So what can you do? Believe it or not, even the small things will help. Think about it. Do you really need to leave your lights on all night? How about motion-activated ones instead? And, do you need to leave them on full blast? How about using lower wattage bulbs or a timer instead? In other words, instead of being wasteful be mindful, because if each of us did those things we could have an impact.

You know, I’ve always had a passion for the skies but only recently discovered this light pollution phenomena. And it kinda scares me. Maybe if it scared more of us, we’d truly make an effort to do more about it.

So, the next time you look upward at night, think about what you don’t and can’t see and why it’s that way. Then think about the small ways you can make a difference.

Want to learn more? Read here:
International Dark-Sky Organization

Or check out the website Seeing in the Dark.

Or watch The City Dark for a real eye opener!

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