Starless skies: a glaring problem blinding Hong Kongers
By Jayden Lam
Tired of bright lights causing you to be nauseous? Tired of not seeing a single star at night? This is because of light pollution. Hong Kong’s light pollution is chronic. It’s time to shed light on the issue.
Light pollution is a form of pollution no one really considers to be dangerous, and it isn’t really frowned upon. To explain light pollution simply, it's just excessive use of artificial light such as torches, candles, lightbulbs, and lamps.
The concept of night and day has been encoded into our DNA. But now we’ve disrupted our cycle by using excessive amounts of artificial light to illuminate the night sky. This isn’t only affecting us, it affects animals and plant’s reproduction, nourishment, sleep, etc. Light pollution not only results in you not being able to see the glistening stars at the evening, it can also cause sleep deprivation, stress, anxiety, and other health problems. Research has proven that light pollution is a factor for breast cancer
It is estimated that over 80% of the world no longer experiences dark skies.
Due to our misuse of artificial light, Hong Kong’s light pollution ranks as one of the worst in the world. Popular areas like Tsim Sa Tsui are 1200 times brighter than the evening sky. In 2016 Hong Kong produced over 100 million gigajoules of electricity due to light pollution. This equates to approximately 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide released into our atmosphere every year
There are various variations of light pollution such as
Glare - excessive brightness that causes discomfort for the eyes
Clutter - Irritating groups of bright lights, the sources mainly come from Unshielded street lights and brightly-lit signs, billboards, and advertisements
Trespass - When light falls when it isn’t needed, an example is when a light source peeks through your window when you are trying to get some sleep
Skyglow - when artificial lights brighten the night sky over cities.
It's extremely wasteful blasting out an excessive amount of artificial lights and energy costs a lot of funds and resources. Here are methods to reduce the amount of light pollution.
Simply turn off the lights when they aren’t in use
Install fewer light sources in the house
Keep the blinds/curtains closed at night
Avoid driving at night
Use the night shift setting on your digital devices at night
Let your eyes adjust to less light or no lights
Please remember that the abundance of light pollution in your house contributes to light pollution and heed these methods of curbing light pollution.
Given a proactive response, natural darkness can return to the skies and, hopefully, someday again the RCHK community will be able to see at least one star.