Light-Pollution
Light-Pollution
“The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago . . . had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” — Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 […]
The fight against light pollution seems relevant to this community. The International Dark Sky Association has a lot of good information for people who are just starting to learn about this issue. Light pollution has many impacts on wildlife and the environment, but it also keeps us from being able to see the stars. I think everyone should get the chance to experience a night sky that isn't obscured by light pollution.
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The lack of attention this issue gets outside of astronomy communities is symptomatic of colonial capitalist state society's othering and exploitation of the natural world. For the vast majority of human history, everyone lived by the stars, to navigate and to plan agricultural, ceremonial, hunting, foraging, and migration cycles. Many indigenous people around the world still do. But if you stop thinking of the stars as living guides who impart their wisdom and start thinking of them as future platinum mines and colonies, you don't pay as much attention to them and you don't notice their disappearance until it's too late. Most settlers see more stars on TV programs about pop sci than actually looking up at them. We are a part of the universe, after all, not some outside observer unaffected by it. We should at least care about that.