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SO EARTH Hour has been and gone, leaving Cape Town with a nice new award for her mantelpiece. I asked the Johannesburg Municipality on its Facebook page (everyone has a Facebook page now) if it planned to switch off the street lights and got no reply at all.
I pictured the muni employees laughing like hyenas: “Huh! Joburg residents would never accept that!”
I like the idea of Earth Hour, but I can’t help wondering whether that concept reaches where it needs to go. My neighbourhood certainly didn’t go dark at Earth Hour this year – and those awful orange cobra-head street lights were on the whole time.
In fact, they seem to be on 24/7 now – I’ve noticed on two recent mornings as I went for my sunrise walk that they were on well after it was light. If I hadn’t been aware and looking for it, I would not have noticed that they were on at 11 in the morning, either. So much for saving electricity.
But it’s not just about saving electricity. I was first introduced to the idea of dark skies by amateur astronomers, who were always searching for perfect darkness; then I began to discover some of the impacts of light pollution on our world; and recently, I read a good book on the subject, called The End of Night by Paul Bogard, an academic in the USA.
Light pollution is excessive, obtrusive or misdirected light – the kind you get in big cities (in Times Square, New York, it is so bad that apparently you can’t see stars effectively).
(Go to www.lightpollution.it/download/mondo_ridotto0p25.gif to see how bad light pollution is across the world – and why the Square Kilometre Array is being built in the Karoo.) You can see Johannesburg from tens of kilometres out at night; it’s like a great orange dome of light on the horizon.
Obtrusive light – well, that I have in my own backyard. Our neighbour has a thing about security, and he has a dazzling light pointed at our mutual fence, which means that we get an eyeful of white light any time we step outdoors at night.
According to Paul Bogard, “increasing numbers of lighting engineers… and police now say that often the amount of light we’re using… goes far beyond true requirements for safety”; security lights that dazzle can in fact effectively hide criminals.
And misdirected light – well, apparently all of our lights ‘leak’ light unless they are designed to light what needs to be lighted. Lighting something like an ATM could be done very tightly with efficient design, instead of lighting the keyboard and five metres of darkness on every side of the ATM machine.
Why should we care? Well, there is the issue of overuse of electricity. If there’s no one inside them working away, do office blocks really have to be ablaze at night?
And it would be nice to see the night sky again – anyone who has lain down outside on a Karoo night will know what I mean: there is no comparison between the city sky’s sprinkling of white stars and that mass of glowing, twinkling gems touched with red and green and yellow that can be seen far from towns in the deep Karoo.
But light pollution has other impacts, too. It disrupts wildlife – sea turtles are a very good example. The poor little mites hatch on what, since time immemorial, has been a dark beach, and they head for the stars hovering over the nearest horizon, which should get them to the sea.
Instead, they find themselves closing in on the inland lights of Ibiza or some other coastal resort, and they die in huge numbers.
It also can stop plants from adjusting to seasonal variations, scientists have shown.
Aside from the ecological consequences, think of the potential economic consequences: your apple trees suddenly become exposed to constant light pollution from a massive casino development some thirty kilometres away (and don’t think I’m kidding; that kind of exposure can indeed reach across many kilometres), and they think it’s still summer when in fact it’s autumn and they should be maturing those Granny Smiths ready for harvest in winter…
Light pollution also has profound effects on us humans and our health, both mental and physical. For example, “…a compelling amount of epidemiologic evidence points to a consistent association between exposure to indoor artificial night-time light and health problems such as breast cancer, says George Brainard, a professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.” (Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution, Ron Chepesiuk, Environmental Health Perspectives, January 2009)
“Studies are either exploring—or have established links—with metabolic disorders including diabetes and obesity as well as chronic conditions of depression and mood disorders, reproductive function, and digestive and gastrointestinal problems.
"As the research on circadian rhythm has progressed, the link between its disruption and the list of potential diseases linked to its disruption has increased…. the scientific community is suggesting that circadian disruptions may play a role in other cancers, including colorectal, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, endometrial, ovarian, and prostate.” (Controlled Environments Magazine, April 2013)
There’s much, much more, and I find it all pretty persuasive. Instead of Earth Hour once a year, why not go for reductions in artificial light throughout the year – intelligent lighting, for example, that only works when a person is in the room, and security lights designed to be efficient but not dazzling?
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
I pictured the muni employees laughing like hyenas: “Huh! Joburg residents would never accept that!”
I like the idea of Earth Hour, but I can’t help wondering whether that concept reaches where it needs to go. My neighbourhood certainly didn’t go dark at Earth Hour this year – and those awful orange cobra-head street lights were on the whole time.
In fact, they seem to be on 24/7 now – I’ve noticed on two recent mornings as I went for my sunrise walk that they were on well after it was light. If I hadn’t been aware and looking for it, I would not have noticed that they were on at 11 in the morning, either. So much for saving electricity.
But it’s not just about saving electricity. I was first introduced to the idea of dark skies by amateur astronomers, who were always searching for perfect darkness; then I began to discover some of the impacts of light pollution on our world; and recently, I read a good book on the subject, called The End of Night by Paul Bogard, an academic in the USA.
Light pollution is excessive, obtrusive or misdirected light – the kind you get in big cities (in Times Square, New York, it is so bad that apparently you can’t see stars effectively).
(Go to www.lightpollution.it/download/mondo_ridotto0p25.gif to see how bad light pollution is across the world – and why the Square Kilometre Array is being built in the Karoo.) You can see Johannesburg from tens of kilometres out at night; it’s like a great orange dome of light on the horizon.
Obtrusive light – well, that I have in my own backyard. Our neighbour has a thing about security, and he has a dazzling light pointed at our mutual fence, which means that we get an eyeful of white light any time we step outdoors at night.
According to Paul Bogard, “increasing numbers of lighting engineers… and police now say that often the amount of light we’re using… goes far beyond true requirements for safety”; security lights that dazzle can in fact effectively hide criminals.
And misdirected light – well, apparently all of our lights ‘leak’ light unless they are designed to light what needs to be lighted. Lighting something like an ATM could be done very tightly with efficient design, instead of lighting the keyboard and five metres of darkness on every side of the ATM machine.
Why should we care? Well, there is the issue of overuse of electricity. If there’s no one inside them working away, do office blocks really have to be ablaze at night?
And it would be nice to see the night sky again – anyone who has lain down outside on a Karoo night will know what I mean: there is no comparison between the city sky’s sprinkling of white stars and that mass of glowing, twinkling gems touched with red and green and yellow that can be seen far from towns in the deep Karoo.
But light pollution has other impacts, too. It disrupts wildlife – sea turtles are a very good example. The poor little mites hatch on what, since time immemorial, has been a dark beach, and they head for the stars hovering over the nearest horizon, which should get them to the sea.
Instead, they find themselves closing in on the inland lights of Ibiza or some other coastal resort, and they die in huge numbers.
It also can stop plants from adjusting to seasonal variations, scientists have shown.
Aside from the ecological consequences, think of the potential economic consequences: your apple trees suddenly become exposed to constant light pollution from a massive casino development some thirty kilometres away (and don’t think I’m kidding; that kind of exposure can indeed reach across many kilometres), and they think it’s still summer when in fact it’s autumn and they should be maturing those Granny Smiths ready for harvest in winter…
Light pollution also has profound effects on us humans and our health, both mental and physical. For example, “…a compelling amount of epidemiologic evidence points to a consistent association between exposure to indoor artificial night-time light and health problems such as breast cancer, says George Brainard, a professor of neurology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.” (Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution, Ron Chepesiuk, Environmental Health Perspectives, January 2009)
“Studies are either exploring—or have established links—with metabolic disorders including diabetes and obesity as well as chronic conditions of depression and mood disorders, reproductive function, and digestive and gastrointestinal problems.
"As the research on circadian rhythm has progressed, the link between its disruption and the list of potential diseases linked to its disruption has increased…. the scientific community is suggesting that circadian disruptions may play a role in other cancers, including colorectal, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, endometrial, ovarian, and prostate.” (Controlled Environments Magazine, April 2013)
There’s much, much more, and I find it all pretty persuasive. Instead of Earth Hour once a year, why not go for reductions in artificial light throughout the year – intelligent lighting, for example, that only works when a person is in the room, and security lights designed to be efficient but not dazzling?
- Fin24
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own.
