THE PROBLEM OF LIGHT POLLUTION

Energy consumption and environmental problems

For millions of years, Earth's living beings have been adapting their biological processes according to two fundamental astronomical cycles:
the succession of seasons and the day-night alternation.

Since the perception of both phenomena is unequal according to latitude, the different species have adapted to the uniqueness of both cycles in their habitat. Any disturbance in one of them would cause distortions whose extent is unknown, but which would certainly lead to the extinction of some species and the appearance of new adaptive requirements for the others.
The action of man and his culture on the environment is currently generating a serious alteration in both cosmic cycles. The industrial activity and lifestyles of consumerist societies cannot be sustained if the current model of capitalist economy is to be maintained, but only through increased energy consumption. Higher levels of'well-being' require more and more energy to be consumed, a process that threatens to lead to aberrant situations such as, for example, the fact that a citizen of an industrialised country currently spends 100 times more energy than a third-world inhabitant. Responsible energy consumption should be inherent in the civic education of the population for two reasons.

The first of these is because the current energy consumption model is based on the conversion of non-renewable natural resources ( coal, oil or uranium ) into energy, which means that their waste shortens the time of use and deprives the inhabitants of non-developed countries of their enjoyment.

The second is because in the processes of conversion into energy, transport and its subsequent consumption, waste is generated that seriously pollutes the environment ( radioactivity , acid rain , pollution of the seas , atmospheric pollution by toxic fumes ) and threatens to alter the climate balance ( greenhouse effect through CO2 emissions ).

At present, global warming of the planet due to this effect is already scientific evidence and its devastating effects on the climate are increasing: torrential rains, catastrophic hurricanes, floods, prolonged droughts, melting of the polar ice caps and a long and regrettable future and so on.

While air pollution from CO2 emitted by thermal power plants, industries and automobiles is the main cause of the greenhouse effect that threatens the Earth's climate balance, the excessive and irresponsible use of electrical energy in outdoor lighting is the cause of a new environmental aggression that threatens nothing less than to eliminate the night, thus altering the second fundamental cosmic cycle. The phenomenon already has a name:

light pollution.