It’s a joke that circulates in scientific circles. What is the most useful object for an amateur astronomer to observe a starry sky? Answer: a vehicle! Today we have to travel so many kilometers to escape the halos of artificial light in urban centers, sometimes visible from 100 kilometers away. Seen from space, our planet sparkles like a disco ball. The Milky Way can no longer be admired with the naked eye by 60% of Europeans and 80% of North Americans. Urban sprawl and human activities have continually pushed back the boundaries of darkness: 83% of the world’s population lives under lit skies. In France, every evening, 3.5 million signs and 11 million street lamps light up.
For a long time, this luminous path was not questioned. The light should shine everywhere. But, for some time now, when the night had been on the back burner, here she is inviting herself back into our lives. Extinguishing fires in more and more numerous municipalities, development of dark sky reserves, multiplication of activities around night or in a twilight atmosphere, emergence of night studies (“studies on the night”), a field of research where geographers, urban planners, sociologists, biologists and ecologists come together.
The 18the century was that of the Enlightenment, the 21ste will this century be that of the praise of the shadow, of reconciliation with the night, this common good long hidden, and yet so necessary to our well-being and the preservation of our ecosystems? Some activists of the nocturnal cause go even further, claiming “a right to obscurity”. A heavy task, because everything opposes the night. “For centuries, darkness has been associated with fear, but also with evil, with ignorancerecalls Samuel Challéat, research fellow at the CNRS and coordinator of the Nocturnal Environment Observatory, which brings together a network of researchers and practitioners around the questions of the need for light and darkness. Conversely, light symbolically carries all positive representations, goodness, knowledge, progress. »
Deleterious effects on living things
Favored by cheap energy at the time, street lamps extended their light network into the countryside from the 1950s onwards, without much dispute. “To criticize artificial nighttime light was to attack its benefits, in terms of comfort, enhancement of heritage, security of travel and property”continues the researcher, author of Save the night (First Parallel, 2019).
You have 80.1% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.