Too Much Light

So there's all this talk about global warming and pollution. But despite this talk about pollution, most of us do not know about light pollution. So what is light pollution? Well, you can probably guess it's pollution and is related to light. If you've taken the time to look at a map of the world at night, you can see a lot of places that are filled with light and other places that have basically no light (ahem, North Korea). But in many of these developed nations like in Europe, there is an increasing amount of light at night.

The artificially-light areas have been growing by at least 2% each years for the past few years, which is startling. More and more cities are switching their lights with energy-efficient and cost-efficient LED's, which are significantly brighter. You would think that the LED's would decrease the need for extensive lights, but it has made it worse as people now have more incentive to install brighter LED's as they save so much energy.  And it's not just major cities either. As people move away into suburbs, they are bringing their light pollution with them.

This is affecting nature in a negative way. Sleep patterns can be altered, which affects health. The migratory patterns of birds, fish, etc are affected. Plants have altered growth rates. The problem with LED's is that they produce blue light, which affects melatonin, a sleep-inducing hormone. With nocturnal activity reduced, the natural systems of the world are being rapidly changed.

So what can we do? There are many ways. The most simple would be to turn the lights so that they are projecting toward the ground and not up at the sky. Reducing lights is not viable as no one would want to remove lights and make the Earth darker. There are people who are researching newer technologies that would reduce certain components of light like blue light, but to be honest no one is paying them much attention as there is no government action being taken right now. A better solution is to just turn off lights. A lot of office buildings have their lights on over the night, and that's just a waste. Sure, it is for security, but could they not just install "smarter" security that detects heat and stuff?

Let's hope Earth won't turn into Coruscant from Star Wars.

http://wjla.com/news/nation-world/good-night-night-light-pollution-increasing-around-globe-11-23-2017

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42059551

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/lost-led-revolution-light-pollution-increasing/

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/space/light-pollution/#light-pollution-city-lights.jpg