On Starlight and Streetlights and Saving Mankind  

Last night my bride and I woke at 2am, hopped in my topless Jeep, and took a chilly drive out to the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve.  It was the darkest place we knew of from which to observe the Perseids meteor shower, an event that lit up the night sky with all sorts of pyrotechnics.  My wife, typically uninterested in astronomical pursuits, was on this occasion gung-ho to tag along.  Upon arriving we stumbled our way amongst the stargazers by the light of our cellular phones (our flashlight would have ruined everyone's nightvision), spread out in the pitch-black field and let the heavens entertain us.

Jupiter was up, and some nearby amateur astronomers loaned us their binoculars long enough to see it's moons, a first sight for yours truly.  The meteors came frequently and sometimes dramatically, and the Milky Way was stunningly visible.

Further, the air was cool enough to ward off insects but warm enough to be enjoyable, and the forecasted clouds stayed away.  The second largest impediment to good 'seeing' is usually the overpowering brightness of the Moon, but on this fine evening it too kept itself respectfully hidden.

But why did we have to drive 30 minutes from our family cottage, itself 2 hours from Toronto, in order to see dark skies?  Well, obviously that's because of the number one impediment to stargazing, urban light pollution.

How significantly can nearby light sources affect the heavenly view?  In my late teens our family bought a cottage, and a friend and I quickly became campfire enthusiasts.  We would set a blaze, tell stories all night, and then eventually let it die down to the smallest pile of embers.   Around this time, usually in the hours just before dawn, we'd move our butts onto the then warmed rocks that form the ring of the fire-pit, and turn our heads upwards.  Great care was taken to immediately quell the slightest flame that licked up from the embers, as even a matchstick sized flicker would render the stars noticeably less visible.   As you can imagine, the effects of a nearby city magnify this problem many hundred-thousand fold.

Years later during the massive blackout of 2003 I went outside of my downtown condominium and was amazed by the clarity of the heavens.  Toronto normally spreads it's light pollution for hundreds of kilometers in every direction, and I lived in the very heart of it.  Looking up and seeing the finer details of the celestial dome while in such a location was an experience I'll never forget, and it made me lament the absence of such a view in my nightly life.

It made me wonder; is there nothing to be done about this problem?  Is mankind so bereft of consideration for the natural world that we now must count light amongst our many forms of pollution?  Carbon dioxide, garbage, ugly babies; are there not enough examples of things we make too much of?

Many dome style street lamps, stadium floodlights, and billboard lights send their rays outwards in all directions, even straight up into the sky. Think of some of the streetlight designs you've seen, and wonder what use there is in wasting energy pointing any of that light upwards? 

 These certainly aren’t the only sources of wasted urban light, but they’re significant ones, while also wholly unnecessary.  They were designed during a time in which concerns over light pollution were not prevalent, when the sky seemed far darker than our technology could ever significantly brighten.

Same goes for many forms of pollution we’ve collectively managed to belch into the world.  The concept of global warming was entirely absent when coal was first conceived as a form of fuel.  The idea that deforestation could cause massive soil erosion, while also significantly reducing the planet’s ability to scrub C0²  or produce oxygen, was simply not considered when man needed wood with which to build his cities.

This sort of thing is an example of un-informed, careless, or negligent design, which I'd argue are the primarily factors behind many of mankind's transgressions upon the environment.  That may sound like a bold statement, but if I can convince you of that idea, perhaps you can be persuaded that 'informed design' is our way around many of those same problems.  It goes back to a point I’ve raised before but feel still needs defending; that if man is to continue it's stewardship of this fair planet it will be through the utilization of better designed technology, not through a reduced use of technology.

Here’s what I’m talking about.  If from the very beginning we had designed our streetlights with light pollution in mind, it would have been simple to reduce their contribution to the problem significantly.  The streetlight doesn’t require any increased degree of sophistication in order to shield the sky from it’s light, just a degree of foresight in the making of it. 

While more serious environmental problems are not so easily resolved, much could be accomplished if we could magically scrap old infrastructure and design it anew.  There has much been written about sustainable design, and it seems likely to be at least a small part of any long-term environmental solution.  Sustainable design attempts to take into consideration the potential negative environmental impacts of any product or object, and design them out of the system.  This happens in the planning stage, and by thinking proactively about such considerations simple solutions can be found to mitigate them.  

For example, since a building's roof will receive copious amounts of sunlight energy over it's lifespan, why not use that energy to help power the lights inside?  If that same building's foundation plunges far down into the earth where things are cooler, why not use that cold to help save energy in the summertime?  There's no groundbreaking technology needed, only clever thinking within the context of a known problem. Using these ideas, buildings can be designed to make more efficient use of energy, power plants can be designed to be cheaper and cleaner, and neighbourhoods can be designed to be more self-sufficient.

But maybe there are additional aspects of human society that could benefit from something like design.  Beyond the stuff that we make, perhaps the very way we conduct ourselves can be planned in such a way that ensures our continued survival on this world.  Again, I’m not discussing technology, but one step further up the chain of abstraction.  Design comes before technology; it’s the conceptual framework upon which the stuff we build and work within is constructed.

The word ‘design’ is so broad-reaching that the definition is almost comedically vague:

“Design; (noun) a specification of an object, manifested by an agent, intended to accomplish goals, in a particular environment, using a set of primitive components, satisfying a set of requirements, subject to constraints”

However for simplicity let’s consider ‘design’ to mean the act of making, or planning to make a system.  As with streetlights and most other man-made systems, the advent of human civilizations did not include considerations of their long-term impact.  As a species we’ve always just gone with the flow, tackling challenges as they present themselves, pursuing happiness, and creating wealth for ourselves when it was available.  In all our efforts, there was very little planning involved.

Where has that improvisational approach led us?  Well, there are now almost 7 billion humans consuming a lion’s share of the planet’s resources in a decidedly unsustainable way.  The oceans and atmosphere are in critical states.  The naturally occurring ecosystems of the earth are strained under the weight of the artificial ones we create to feed our swollen population. 

Oh yeah, and you can’t see the stars at night.

It seems to me like a major effort must be made to start designing every aspect of our society, so no light gets shone in a direction in which it serves no use.  Everything should be fair game for examination, even the number of people that should exist on this planet.  Every cultural, political, and ideological paradigm that conflicts with our continued survival on this earth should be on the table for redesign, if not outright dismissal.  Sacred cows should not be tolerated in the face of losing the field upon which they graze.

After all, we only have one chance to build a successful society.  Or to be more specific, there’s no second chance if our efforts fail.  We designed the very light of our own civilization.  If we're not careful, we may inadvertently design the darkness of it's downfall.

When I look up at the stars at night, it saddens me to know that I’ll not be around for the time when some of the really great human questions get answered.  Are we alone?  How different are our neighbours from we?  Yet far more saddening is the thought that our entire species may not survive the few centuries before we can reasonably expect technology from which to draw answers.

There are so many mysteries in those twinkling lights, and so much of how we would define ourselves could come from knowing more about them.  Many important answers to many important questions lie in wait amongst the stars.

What a pity we have to go so far out of our way to see them.