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(meteorobs) Re: Even Dear Abby hears about LP!



    Well . . . this is the first time that I've ever written a letter to Dear 
Abby, but hopefully this might get some results.  The door suddenly opened 
this past Saturday with the letter from "Living in the Light Against Our 
Will" who complained about light pollution in regard to a neighbor's security 
light.  You can see the letter for yourself by going to 
http://dearabby.uexpress.com or  <A HREF="http://dearabby.uexpress.com/">
Click here: http://dearabby.uexpress.com/</A> and clicking on the calendar to 
May 19.

    After reading this letter in my local newspaper ("Newsday"), I urge 
everyone concerned about the light pollution problem to write a letter to 
"Abby" (who really is the mother-daughter team of Pauline and Jeanne 
Phillips) and explain what we are up against in terms of the current siege of 
"light blight."  Admittedly, this column probably gets countless thousands of 
letters per week, but perhaps a surge of letters from the astronomical 
community will help get the message across to the millions who read it on a 
daily basis.

    My hope is that including information on contacting the IDA and signing 
off with my affiliation with New York's Hayden Planetarium will improve the 
odds -- however slightly -- of getting it published.

-- joe rao

Dear Abby:

    This is in regard to the letter from "Living in the Light Against Our 
Will" -- the person who complained that the glare from their next-door 
neighbor's security light was spilling over into their back yard and 
throughout their house. 

    What "Living" has described is called "light trespass" and as such he/she 
is within their rights to tell their neighbor that they need to either 
properly shield or completely remove the offending light. "Living" should 
also visit the local Town Hall to check on local ordinances regarding this 
situation.

     If I may, I'd also like to cite this as a prime example -- in these 
energy conscious times -- of a waste of energy. Over the past two decades, 
there has been a noticeable increase in ubiquitous, overbright, garish 
security lighting. Usually negligently installed and some cases illegal, 
these lights shine down needlessly onto empty parking lots, closed 
storefronts and adjoining properties. 

     In addition, throughout North America, hundreds upon millions of 
additional precious watts are wasted because poorly designed streetlamps send 
a portion of their light up into the sky. Truth be told, few outdoor 
fixtures, security or otherwise have adequate shielding at all.

    Many will vehemently argue the point that such bright lights are a 
necessity because they reduce crime.  Abby, this is a fallacy.  According to 
the National Institute of Law Enforcement (an agency of the US Department of 
Justice) brighter streets merely give an illusion of safety.  In fact, many 
police departments now report that darkness is often safer, because neighbors 
have learned to alert police if they see any lights on in a building. There 
is even less grafiti, because it is usually the brightly-lit walls that 
attract the spray-can vandals not dark ones.

     And sadly Abby, we are also losing our view of the night sky -- the next 
endangered natural resource. Truth be told, if the current siege of "light 
blight" goes unchecked, a generation from now, seeing the stars will be 
reduced to a museum rendition, with the factitious firmament of your local 
planetarium becoming our children's only view of the universe.  

    It is not too late to reverse this trend.  President George W. Bush 
recently commented that to meet the growing energy demand new methods of 
conservation must be developed and implemented.  This can be done by 
investing in more efficient, properly shielded lighting fixtures; determining 
a systematic criteria for precisely how much lighting is needed for a given 
situation and perhaps even imposing late-night "curfews" on outdoor 
advertising signs.

    And your readers can get much more information about conserving energy 
and utilizing more efficient forms of lighting by contacting the 
International Dark-Sky Association at 3225 N. First Avenue, Tucson, Arizona 
85719 or visit their website at http://www.darksky.org.

    No rational person wishes to return to the horse-and-buggy era, but isn't 
this another case of too much of a good thing?

-- JOE RAO
   Lecturer/Staff Instructor. 
   Hayden Planetarium, New York         
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