Research has found that the majority of people under 40 have
never experienced complete darkness. We live in a world flourished by artificial
light 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. As the article stated, astronomers rate
the darkness of our skies on a scale from 9 (darkest) to 1 (lightest). Most of
our time is spent between the levels of 5-8, rarely venturing down to 3. As you
can imagine, most of the unnecessary light comes from humans. This extreme
waste of energy can have unforeseen consequences too. The overuse of light can
lead to problems such as sleep disorders, diabetes, obesity, and even cancer. 99%
of us live under polluted skies and can therefore not see the thousands of
stars and galaxies. When gazing into the sky at night the majority of people can
only see about 25 stars. This number is extremely small compared to the 2500
stars living in the atmosphere. Most of the light is totally unnecessary and is
done solely out of bad habits. People leave on lights and electronics not
realizing that all the wasted energy will add up. Although the article did not
state any solutions the most obvious one would be to simply turn off any and
all sources of electricity once you’re done using them. Some efforts, such as
Earth Hour, have become popular and helped the environment immensely. Every year
on March 29th from 8:30-9:30 people all around the world can choose
to participate in Earth Hour by turning off all of the lights in your building.
In my opinion, people need to realize that not using as much electricity not
only helps the environment but their wallets as well. With houses and buildings
sprouting up and expanding daily we need to get the energy crisis under
control.
Madison makes a great point; yes there are no solutions to this problem because people are simply wasteful. Wouldn’t you want to see 2500 stars at night instead of 200 looking out our window and seeing light poles, and power lines everywhere wasting the money in your own pockets? I would contribute in the Earth Hour because that would be life changing being able to see what the earth really looks like in pure darkness. This problem is fixable but the human race just needs to realize how wasteful we really are. It’s a challenge for us all because we are so used to using electricity but one hour of the year would not kill anyone to at least try Earth Hour. It is a simple task that that anyone can do and it would help people see how much we really are wasting in this place we call our home for now.
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