We’re all lit up and it’s wasting energy, affecting our health and having negative effects on the natural world.
That’s why a group of community stewards is organizing to take a look at light pollution in Nanaimo and how it can be reduced.
The Nanaimo Dark Sky Project is an excellent initiative and one that is long overdue. In many urban centres, taxpayers’ money is being needlessly spent on streetlights that blaze unnecessarily throughout the nighttime hours while wasting energy.
Here in Nanaimo, an estimated 38 per cent of the city’s energy budget is spent on street lighting that is used when the vast majority of citizens are sleeping.
Many businesses are also guilty of keeping their electronic signage blazing beyond business hours.
The result is an environment flooded with light trespass, glare, clutter and energy waste, all resulting in what is known as urban sky glow.
It’s a culture that extends around the globe, a nod to our primordial days when humans needed to gather and create light to protect ourselves from the threats that lurked just outside our caves.
Today, light pollution is a nuisance and a waste. By first acknowledging it, then preventing it through using the right amount of light, shielding it so that it goes down, not sideways or up, using timers to control it, and by using lights like low pressure sodium, light pollution can be harnessed.
The benefits are evident. We’ll sleep better, save money and energy, and allow nocturnal wildlife to function more efficiently.
And by turning the lights out and looking up, perhaps we’ll be able to see and learn more about the heritage of our dark skies.
