Eklöf is an bat expert at Stockholm University. "He is able to tell us authoritatively that, though bats do indeed use natural sonar to echolocate their way around, their eyes see well enough in the dark to help in their navigation," Gopnik reports. "Though the book is written as a sort of Silent Spring manifesto against the ecological devastations of light pollution, its considerable charm depends on the encyclopedic intensity with which he evokes the hidden creatures of the night."
With the creation of artificial light, humans erased some of their own connections with the natural world. Gopnik writes, "Where once human life had its nocturnal rhythms, interrupted only by the dim light of candles and fireplaces, the Earth is now so lit up that, seen from space, it glows like a Japanese lantern. Eklöf writes, 'artificial light, the polluted light, is now dominant—light that causes birds to sing in the middle of the night, sends turtle babies in the wrong direction, and prevents the mating rituals of coral in reefs, which take place under the light of the moon.'”
Often extreme light pollution is "not some helpful harborside lighthouse but the 'sky beam' atop the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Creating forty-two billion candlepower of light every night, meant merely as a come-on to tourists and gamblers, it unintentionally excites and undoes flocks of birds, genetically programmed by evolution to fly toward bright light—and, in 2019, attracted clouds of grasshoppers, who flew toward the pseudo-Egyptian pyramid with all the horror of a pseudo-Egyptian plague."
Gopnik adds: "Eklöf insists that doom is still avoidable. 'Light pollution is the easiest of all environmental problems to solve, at least technically,' he writes. 'We, as private individuals, can, with little cost, reduce the amount of our light pollution. With light shades, downward-facing light sources low to the ground, and dim lighting, we can reduce the cities’ total amount of light, as well as the artificial light scattered in the atmosphere.'”
Gopnik reminds us, "The light of reason makes searchlights and lighthouses; the love of darkness asks us to adjust our eyes and egos sufficiently to see as owls do. Seek light in the morning; accept the night when it comes. Then call it a day."
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