by Paul Bogard
We build a fire. Warmth and heat and firelight orange. Suddenly the playa feels like a flat lid, a surface that might implode. The fire burns as though the earth has opened to release its own internal flames. We look at the fire, then at the stars, all of them fires, all around. A thousand trillion fires, as though we have lit our own star here. My pants legs hot, my eyelids and eyebrows hot, too. No idea of time. No moon. We stare at the fire for a while and then remember the stars, stepping away from one to know the other. Later, in sleeping bags set yards apart, we lie awake by the light of embers, with the Pleiades rising for the first time this year in the east, until the red edge of dawn, and our own yellow star.
We live at a time when a place as dark as the Black Rock Desert still exists. But within decades this darkness will exist no longer, unless the spread of light pollution can be stopped. Already there are people working tirelessly—oftentimes volunteering their time—with this goal in mind. Here are five of those people, in five different parts of the world, doing varied and vital work on behalf of darkness.
On the World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness, the Black Rock Desert is shown in black—the darkest category—but the light from Reno and surrounding communities has almost reached its edge. And, truthfully, it may already have, as the atlas was built from data fifteen years old. There is maybe no more dramatic portrayal of the spread of light pollution in our world today than these Italian maps of the world at night. In their color-coded portrayal of how light shines outward, like circles of water moving out from a stone’s splash, these maps show clearly how most of us in western Europe and North America no longer experience anything close to real darkness. These maps are the reason I have traveled on an old train, its windows open to the spring countryside flowing by, to the small city of Mantua (Mantova) in Italy’s region of Lombardy. Surrounded on three sides by lakes, Mantua was one of Europe’s greatest Renaissance courts and features a town center in which three different piazzas join together. In 2008 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of its architecture. It is also high school science teacher Fabio Falchi’s hometown.
When I first see Falchi he is smiling and waving a baseball cap over his head while he talks on his cell phone next to the Volvo he’s parked outside the station. In his early forties, Falchi has close-cut black hair graying at the temples. Trim and dressed in pressed shirt and slacks, he is polite and good-natured. And although he is shy about his English—which he says he learned by reading Sky & Telescope as a teenager (and “a little bit in school, yes”)—it is excellent. As we walk through this town he loves, he tells me why he gives all his free time to protect darkness.
“I became involved because when I was five my parents gave me a present of a small toy telescope and I saw the moon, and I liked it. When I was in the eighth grade, middle school, they bought me another telescope. Then started the passion for astronomy, and the passion against the enemy of astronomy, light pollution.”
We walk at the edge of the old city, across the highway from two of Mantua’s three lakes.
“I remember in 1988 I wrote to the bestselling Italian astronomy magazine asking if they could start to take signatures from their readers to ask Parliament to take action against light pollution, and they answered me it was a lost battle. But twenty-five years later we have fifteen-year laws against light pollution.”
Much of that success has to do with the organization of which Falchi is president, CieloBuio (DarkSky), and the success it has had in Lombardy. Home to nearly ten million people and the city of Milan, Lombardy is, Falchi says, “like a small nation.” It is where much of the Italian gross national product is generated; on its own, it would be the world’s seventeenth largest economy.
“Here in this province, the growth of light pollution is stopped,” he says. “We have the same sky now as it was thirteen years ago. So it is a huge improvement over the past, where we had a doubling almost every decade.” Significantly, the growth of light pollution hasn’t slowed because no new buildings have been constructed in Lombardy over the past thirteen years, or no new lights put up. In fact, because of continual increases in power and efficiency, the region’s lamps actually now give twice as much light flux as just a decade ago. But because of CieloBuio and groups like it, most of that light shines downward. “Without action,” Falchi says, “we would have a sky that is double the brightness that it was ten years ago. So it has been a lot of work for us at CieloBuio, but we have some results.”
He knows the work will not end. “Sometimes we are worried about what might happen in the other countries where we haven’t the possibility to work and to explain our strategies. We were able to convince our politicians of the need to act and to make laws, and for now it’s working. But if the rest of the planet goes another way, it could be difficult to stay an island. We are very few people and it is difficult to work on all the things.” He laughs. “In my spare time I have a job. And also I have to work for free on light pollution. My wife is quite understanding, but I cannot work too much time on this without earning anything.
“But it is stronger than me,” he says. “I cannot not take action.”
We are strolling, talking as we go, past an eleventh-century church and into a fourteenth-century piazza. Beneath an arch between two buildings Falchi points to four small black iron rings protruding from the ceiling. A medieval torture device, he says. Four different ropes were tied to a prisoner’s four limbs and slung through the rings and then pulled. “Like Guantanamo,” he jokes. A few motorbikes zoom past, and people saunter home, savoring the evening air. Church bells ring the hour, and all around us we hear the cries of swallows as they swoop from mud nests under building eaves. “A sign of spring,” he says. We make our way slowly, as the evening moves toward dark, toward a favorite restaurant of his on one of the squares.
“I was struck by an article I read in 1981 about light pollution. I was thirteen, and since then I have thought about light pollution and how to combat it. And thirty years later, here we are, still working. And what I think is that if we are not able to solve this small problem—small in respect to other environmental problems—if we are not able to solve this one, well, we will not be able to solve the rest. And nature will solve it for us. It is the human beings that will lose, not the planet.
“In Europe we have arrived at the point where we cannot anymore go easily to a dark place. And if also in the United States they don’t take action, or take wrong actions, it will be only a question of time. The growth of light pollution is fast but not fast enough to make people take action. So it is fast, and in one generation you see a lot of difference. But one year to another there is not a lot of difference, and people who are born now are used to this sky and they don’t know what they have lost. The elders remember a long time before, when there was a good sky. So it is a strange thing, fast but not fast enough. Or, on the other hand, not slow enough.
“We really don’t realize what we’re missing. Our children grow without perception of the universe. They grow up without ever having seen the Milky Way, or a pristine sky, a total solar eclipse. And these are places that you need to see, like Venice, like the Grand Canyon. There are some things that open your mind and your heart.”
I want to add another experience to the list of things that open your mind and your heart, and that is sitting down for dinner at an outdoor restaurant in an ancient Italian plaza. Falchi points back toward the kitchen, housed behind a brick arch, and smiles. “This building is from the twelfth century, so maybe nine hundred years old.” The name is Ristorante Grifone Bianco, and the menu features a Romanesque seal with a white griffon, the mythological creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. The restaurant sits on Piazza Erbe, near an astronomical clock from the fifteenth century, and has a dozen patio tables. At 8:00 p.m. we aren’t the first dinner guests, but we do have our choice of a few open tables at the edge of the piazza. Falchi and I both love food, and deciding where to eat has
been part of our conversation. Pasta is what I’m after, the local specialties. Beyond that, it’s his choice. When we sit, his choice feels perfect, and not only because of the menu.
The spread of light pollution over Europe, circa 1996, as demonstrated by the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness. (P. Cinzano, F. Falchi [University of Padova], C. D. Elvidge [NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, Boulder]. Copyright Royal Astronomical Society. Reproduced from the Monthly Notices of the RAS by permission of Blackwell Science.)
We shouldn’t think that astronomy or even a night sky is the only reason for protecting the night. Pasta and the sharing of wonderful local food with friends in a pleasant setting are good reasons for protecting the night, too. Falchi and I will start with red wine—Morellino from Tuscany and Lambrusco from Mantua—and a plate of thinly sliced meats with sweet onions. And we will continue to talk about Falchi’s work. “It is all wins,” he says. “If we combat light pollution, you haven’t light pollution, you have less energy consumption, you have to spend less money for lighting, for taxes.” Falchi could have mentioned the human health angle. Or the ecological angle. But the point is that the more you learn about light pollution, the more you see that solving it is a win-win situation. Or, as they say in Italian, “it is all wins.” And, yes, there are challenges. As Falchi says of his opponents, primarily the energy companies and some fixture manufacturers, “They are not defeated. They try to find other ways to make the things go as usual without any regulations.” But the greatest challenge someone like Falchi faces, or CieloBuio, or any of the other advocates for darkness that I will talk with is this: a lack of awareness—awareness of darkness, awareness of light pollution. As it was for Rubin Naiman and David Crawford, so it is in Italy for Fabio Falchi and CieloBuio. It was the same in Paris for an activist there when I asked if the French are more aware than others of the problem of light pollution, living, as they do, in the City of Light. He said, “As anywhere, no more, no less.”
And if we are aware, what can we do?
“You can help in a lot of ways,” Falchi says. “It depends on how much time and effort you want to put into the issue. If you live already in a place with laws, you can contact your municipality and say, ‘There is a road that is not correctly lighted; you have to act.’ On our website we have letters already completed. You have only to change the addresses and put your signature, and you are done. In three-quarters of Italy you can do this. And in Veneto, the region to the east of Lombardia, there is a web of amateur astronomers named Venetostellato, Starry Veneto, and they make since 2009 about four thousand letters to the municipalities asking for action against some specific installation. And it works. Where you haven’t laws you have to work with politicians who will support you.
“You have to be very strong technically, you have to have all the answers to their criticisms. And so you have to know your business. And then you will be successful. You can’t go there and only say you have to protect the sky because it’s beautiful. It doesn’t work.”
Falchi chuckles as he says this, and it could be amusement at the thought—what if it were that easy, if one could convince a politician simply by pointing out beauty—but it could also be delight, for the waiter in his black coat, black bow, and white apron has brought to our table the first of our two pastas (we will order four all together, and be too full for secondi of meat or fish, though not too full for dessert). The first two are tortelli di zucca al burro versato (which directly translates to pumpkin ravioli in “well-versed butter”) and agnoli ripieni, a small pasta stuffed with beef, pork (salamella and prosciutto crudo), eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano, bread crumbs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. These both are specialties of Mantua, though the White Griffon had only the tortelli on its menu; Falchi had asked, on behalf of the American, if the kitchen could make the agnoli. And here now is their “yes, of course” on the plate before me.
Music from an accordion plays in the background, and I hear from the other tables the murmur of several languages, the muted percussion of silver forks against ceramic plates. A small white dog parades past, barking at something, at nothing, proud to own the moment. We have timed this all perfectly, timed the break in the conversation to coincide with the last of the day’s light fading behind the very old buildings. Timed our dinner to accompany the coming of night, and darkness.
But also, unfortunately, our dinner comes with the rising of floodlights on the astronomical clock tower and the piazza, including one that shines directly onto the restaurant’s yellow umbrellas. When the waiter returns to check the level of wonder we’re experiencing (or whatever he says—I understand only the grazie and prego and sí that Falchi and he exchange), Falchi points over his left shoulder at the floodlight and—I assume—asks about the light. The waiter sighs and launches into an explanation that Falchi replies to with nods and what sound like questions. When the waiter leaves, Falchi smiles. “Until last year there wasn’t the flood, but I think I am the first to complain.” He laughs. “The waiter said it was too dark last year for dining here. So they think it is a good thing. Maybe somebody else will complain.”
Falchi knows the odds are greater that someone will complain that there still is not enough light, whether here in this piazza or just about anywhere else, and that they are more likely to get more light than he is to get more darkness. Part of the problem, he says, is that politicians, while not convinced by beauty alone, can be convinced by the promise of votes alone. “It is proven that politicians are reelected more easily if they make something that is visible,” he says, “and what is more visible than changing the lighting? People ask for more light and they give it.” Nonetheless, Falchi is trying to get the city of Mantua to turn off the lights on its monuments—like the clock tower—after midnight. I tell him about my experience in Florence, about how I couldn’t help thinking that the city could be so much more beautiful at night if it were lit with care rather than with glare. And how I’ve seen this in too many cities now, including otherwise attractive cities and towns that spend thousands or even millions on improving their daylight appearance but then forget themselves after dark.
During Earth Hour this year the lights on the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa and surrounding Piazza dei Miracoli were turned off, Falchi says. “And there are some photos of the piazza without the lights, and it is fantastic, with the stars. It would be fantastic to have a network of great places like this to be the forerunner of a new way to see the monuments.”
Because for most of history that’s how you would have seen them, in moonlight or starlight? I ask.
“Or with very warm lights, like a flame,” he says. “Not with bright light and white, almost blue, light.”
It’s a thought I have again and again. How fascinating would it be to see certain old buildings, towers and churches, for example, not plastered with floodlights but touched only by moonlight, by starlight, or even just flames? In almost every case the scene wouldn’t be as it had been before electric light because even if—as Falchi saw in Pisa—you turned the lights off on the monument, there would still be the sky glow from lights in the rest of the city or village. Still, that could make the atmosphere more appealing, I imagine—a bit of ambient light to warm the scene.
“I will try here,” he says. “If I will be able to shut off the lights at midnight we will see the difference, and maybe it will be a discovery, because no one has seen the monuments with dark or surrounding lights shut off in fifty years.”
“People don’t know what they’re missing,” I say.
“But most people, when you explain better, they understand and agree. Not all, but most. We are starting to realize the value of the dark. Up till now we try to exorcise the night. For me it is impossible to think because I love night, of course, but for some people the dark is the dark side of life. They are worried about it.”
When our two other pasta dishes arrive—orzo mantecato with shrimp and pancetta, and bigoli carbonara—I turn my tape recorder off so that
we can eat. A man sings now with the accordion.
Earlier, Falchi and I had walked past some new streetlights that might look odd to someone who had never seen something similar before. Although they were in the shape of a regular carriage light, with four rectangular sides, there was no glass—and, um, no lamps. Actually, there were—the Italians are creative, but they haven’t yet mastered the lampless streetlight—but the lamps were housed up inside the top of the fixture. The result of no glass and no obvious bulb is significantly less light pollution. These are the fully shielded lights that Falchi and those like him hope will be coming to a lamppost near you very soon.
It used to be thought that if we just kept the light from going straight up, if we could just cap the lights, we could stop sky glow. And while doing this is vital, it’s not enough. In the past few years we have found that the worst cause of sky glow is not the light allowed to soar straight up but the light emitted at low angles above the horizontal. Light cast at these low angles is scattered and reflected by the aerosols and water droplets in our atmosphere to a greater degree than light sent straight up. As a result, these rays travel for long distances near the ground and cause sky glow in locations far from the light source—such as in the suburbs and countryside. Light headed straight into the sky causes sky glow near the lights, but not so much far away. Most streetlights are shaped like a bowl or vase, and light within these shapes will bounce every which way, including at these low angles—and into your eyes. While there are plenty of different fully shielded fixture designs, many made—like those in Mantua—to look like those we’re used to seeing, one feature they share is that unless you’re right up close, looking up at the fixture, you can’t see the actual lamp.
I ask Falchi if he thinks light pollution can be controlled enough so that a starry sky can be restored everywhere.
“Well, not really everywhere. But I think that if the technical prescriptions we suggest are enforced everywhere, we can have, even in Europe, places that are a one-hour drive from everywhere where you can see a very good sky. For example, from where I live, if you drive one hour, you arrive in the mountains, and we have a sky that is twice or three times as bright as the natural one, so we have lost the pristine beauty of our skies. But if we work hard to make good enforcement everywhere, then if you go fifty kilometers from major cities you can have a very, very good sky.”
