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SUSTAINABILITY Recycling • Resources • Lifestyle
Protecting the
Vanishing Night Sky
s dusk became night, the red
canyon walls that rose thou
sands of feet above the Colorado
River disappeared into empty
darkness and the clear sky filled
with brilliant stars. I lay in my sleeping
bag on the cooling sandbar ° unable to fall
asleep, unlike my sons beside me — and
watched the constellations and occasional
Above the Water Line
1
Sally Bethea
Sally Bethea
is the retired
executive director
of Chattahoochee
Riverkeeperand
an environmental
and sustainability
advocate.
aircraft move across the sky between the
canyon rims, as the Earth turned.
20 July 2021 | [El
Our weeklong float trip on what
has been called the American Nile was
memorable for many reasons, but now,
a dozen years later, I still think about
that dazzling, starry window onto the
universe and the sense of wonder that
it inspired. In the years since, I’ve had
other opportunities to experience dark
skies — away from the smoky, orange glow
of artificial urban light — in places like
southern California’s Anza-Borrego Desert
State Park, Wisconsin’s Door County, Isle
Royale National Park, and, more recently,
the banks of the San Juan River in Utah.
Since civilization began, stars, comets,
and planets have served as guides to track
time — fundamental for growing and
harvesting crops, religious rituals, and
ocean navigation — and as the basis for
stories used to suggest the origin of the
universe and man’s place and purpose.
When electric light pollution began to
increase with the rapid growth of cities and
highway systems in the middle of the last
century, the night sky started to vanish.
Astronomers and dark-sky advocates
say that we’re losing the night sky so
gradually that people don’t realize what is
being lost. As a resident of Midtown for
the past four decades, I include myself in
this group of poor observers. When did
the sky above my house become so flat
and featureless, except when a full moon
dominates? I remember the starry winter
skies of my childhood in Buckhead in the
1950s and 60s.
An ordinary streetlight is thousands of
times brighter than the stars on a moonless
night and, unless it’s shielded, its light
travels far beyond the area of intended
illumination; an average outdoor light
fixture emits a glow that can affect the
darkness of the night sky for as much as 15
miles in every direction, according to the
International Dark-Sky Association (IDA).
Eighty percent of Americans can no longer
see the cloudy, shimmering ribbon of
stars known as the Milky Way from their
homes, a startling increase from just a few
decades ago.
The progressively rare and fragile night
sky is a resource worth defending for
many reasons. Thirty percent of artificial
light is wasted, shining in places where
it doesn’t benefit anyone. Lights left on
at times and in places where they aren’t
needed squander energy and money. Light
pollution can also disrupt our sleep and
affect ecosystems and animals, including
the migratory patterns of birds and the
nesting success of turtles.
Spurred by satellite images of the Earth
at night showing few dark areas across our
country, the problem with light pollution
was finally acknowledged in the 1980s.
The dark-sky movement was born. Led
by the IDA, it has inspired regulations
and programs to promote energy-efficient
outdoor lighting and formally recognize
dark-sky preserves: protected areas that
encourage stewardship of the night sky
through responsible lighting policies, the
use of efficient, well-designed fixtures, and
education initiatives.
In the past 20 years, the International
Dark-Sky Places Program has urged
communities, parks and protected areas
around the world to preserve natural dark
sites that contribute to climate change
resilience, improve human health, and
create tourism opportunities. Today,
there are 177 certified dark-sky places
around the world, two-thirds of which
are in the United States, primarily in the
West. Twenty-four certified areas can
be found in Utah alone; its governor
recently announced that the “astrotourism”
industry expects to generate $6 billion
and support more than 113,000 new jobs
in the American Southwest over the next
decade.
Longtime Intown residents Stephanie
and Tom Coffin have made dozens of
trips crisscrossing the country over the
past five decades. In the early years, they
remember the spectacular dark night
skies and bright stars easily visible from
their camping sites. As the years passed,
the Coffin’s realized that they were seeing
fewer stars, due to urban light pollution
and the brightly illuminated recreational
vehicles that increasingly dominated their
campgrounds.
This past April, the Coffin’s found “a
totally different experience” at Georgia’s
only official dark-sky place: Stephen
C. Foster State Park in the Okefenokee
National Wildlife Refuge, which
was certified in 2016 as a “gold-tier”
International Dark Sky Park. “Gold-tier”
means the sky is clear from all but the
most minor impacts of light pollution.
Working with the local electrical co-op,
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