We have become addicted to light in the darkness. Marjolijn van Heemstra argues for a turnaround. When the night is allowed to be dark again, that is not only good for energy consumption and the ecosystem, it also makes us a different person.
It’s autumn. We turn away from the sun, from light and long days. We are heading for darkness, or rather: endless amounts of artificial light. About 3.5 million lampposts blow away the darkness from sunset to sunrise via a central system. And then there are the countless private lighting systems: lamps on sports fields, in office buildings and illuminated signs that work overtime during the dark months. Handsome poinsettia that knows how to shine through.
The Netherlands is one of the most light-polluted places in the world, caused by a combination of factors: the greenhouses in the Westland, the ports, the reflection of all our water, the fact that we are so densely populated and, last but not least, bad regulations.
Expressed in earth my inheritance was a handful/ expressed in air, the whole universe, wrote the Spanish poet Raphael Arozarena at the beginning of the last century. Today it is hard to imagine what he saw when he looked up at night. A dizzying cosmos, the Milky Way an otherworldly swipe of light. The view that enchants and inspires humanity since its inception and from which we were largely cut off in a few generations. There are few places in the world where you can still find the pristine starry sky that was accessible to everyone in the time of Arozarena. And we lose another 2 percent of that pristine darkness every year due to increasing lighting.
It is incomprehensible if you dwell on it too long. How did we so quietly exchange our greatest view, the primal source of science and wonder, for lampposts and street lamps?
Victory over the darkness
Of course, public lighting has brought us all kinds of things. Safety. Accessibility. Ease. When the first electric lighting was connected in more and more places in our country at the beginning of the last century, families took to the streets to admire their radiant houses from a distance. The victory over the darkness hurled them straight into progress. But with those gains came great losses, the contours of which are slowly becoming clearer.
Scientific research in recent years has shown that the constant light keeps our bodies active at times when we should be resting. Too little recovery has a negative impact on our immune system and can lead to the development of stress-related diseases.
Besides humans, there are more, many more living beings that suffer from artificial light. Insects and moths circle lampposts until they drop dead, fireflies stop the glow necessary for their reproduction. Light-sensitive bats lose ground. Countless animals become disoriented as they can no longer navigate a dazzling world. A well-known example is the hundreds of thousands of migratory birds that crash every year on oil drilling platforms because they get caught in the bright tunnels of light that shine up from the platforms.
Anyone who talks about too much artificial light will soon find someone who talks about safety. Understandable. A dark world feels uncertain, unclear, dangerous. But in many cases she is not. In fact, in remote places where we tend to create a sense of security with lamps, the light often does the opposite. Without social control, lamps mainly facilitate the bad intentions of rabble. Breaking in is easier if there is a light on it. A brightly lit cycle path through a dark forest often creates a false sense of safety. The person who cycles is visible, so vulnerable and can perceive the environment less well because light has a blinding effect. On many bike paths you would also be able to find your way without lampposts. You just have to give your eyes time to get used to the dark. It would make a difference if the transitions between lit and unlit parts of the city were less harsh. Excessive lighting shows us how big the difference sometimes can be between being safe and feeling safe.
light addiction
The conversation about safety is highly polarized, said lighting designer Iris Dijkstra when I was having tea with her on a rainy Sunday last month. Together with architect Nynke Rixt Jukema, we met in Friesland to see how we can join forces from different disciplines to help the Netherlands get rid of its light addiction. According to both Dijkstra and Jukema, clients almost always talk about light or dark. The fact that there are countless shades of twilight between white and black is usually forgotten. Dark is seen as a problem and light as a solution. But the relationship between the two, the designer and architect said, is more complicated than that. Often it is not a question of ‘or’ but of ‘and’. In Dijkstra’s words: more light often means more dark. The brighter the lights, the greater the contrast. Try to map out your surroundings under a lamppost.
Her words reminded me of an anecdote that the forester of the Amsterdam waterland recently shared. On a late group walk, he and his walkers spotted a hare leaping across the field from an unlit trail a mile away. Shortly afterwards, when they walked under the lampposts, they could see less than six feet into the distance. Gone field, gone hare. The world around them had disappeared.
There is a point where light no longer works in your favor, where it actually obscures your view. We have amply reached that point in many places in the Netherlands. The good news: There seems to be momentum for a turnaround. Energy prices are high, our consumption has to be reduced, there is more talk than ever about saving.
There are only two major obstacles. The first is practical. Where in the past each gas lamp was lit separately, lampposts are now collectively connected to one national combination. Based on the assumption that every Dutch person would always want more and never less light, a system was chosen in which reducing light costs more money. It is one of the ironic outgrowths of our advanced thinking about progress. A world that is designed for multiplication in such a way that a step back is no longer an option.
The moment it starts to dawn on how unhealthy the lack of dark is, customization is priceless in many places. There are cities that have branched off their own grid from the main grid. They can in principle facilitate their own darkness, but these places can be counted on one hand for now.
Significant steps require the whole system to change and that requires a huge investment because all over the country the ground would have to be opened up to adapt the grid. This is only done once every forty years: when the energy grid is upgraded. The last update took place during the past decade. In preparation, Netbeheer Nederland sketched a number of scenarios at the time. Iris Dijkstra told how surprised she was when she read the scenarios again afterwards. Politicians had not opted for the most sustainable option, which would mean an energy reduction of thirty percent and required a much less heavy energy grid. The reason? That option would only work if there was an investment in awareness so that behavior change would take place. That seemed so unrealistic to the directors that they decided not to take the risk. This brings us naturally to the second major obstacle in the fight against light pollution: a mentality problem.
No matter how many scientific studies show that light disrupts our biorhythms, that it promotes fatal insect deaths and sends our bats to their deaths. The ecological consequences may be great, but we live more than according to ecology according to mythology.
The myth from which our addiction to light arises is that of eternal progress, a story expressed in the compulsive productivity that dominates our society.
To this myth belongs the self-image of civilized man. A species that subjects the environment to its wishes. The world must be polished, smoothed, served in bite-sized human chunks. This gives an overview and the illusion of control. Exactly what the darkness does not do and so it must be subdued. It has crept into our thinking, our language, our culture over the centuries: the darker the worse.
The worship of the lamp has a dark edge. In an interesting online lecture for the Embassy of the Free Mind, cultural psychologist Colette Kavanagh explained two years ago the relationship between the rise of artificial lighting and the racist tendency to strive for a world that is as pure and light as possible. Kavanagh is not alone in linking racism to the obsession with light. The Japanese writer Tanizaki saw electric light as yet another Western attempt to banish all darkness from the world.
Obviously a ceiling light doesn’t make you a racist, but it’s interesting to explore what’s on the fringes of our irrational use of lighting. If we really want to give the darkness a chance, not only our streets but also some deeply rooted assumptions will have to be shaken.
Scientific research is crucial, but not enough. For a change in mentality, we must also experience the importance of dark ourselves. You can’t love something you don’t know. And you can’t protect what you don’t love. To know the dark, go dark, wrote poet Wendell Berry. Most nature reserves in the Netherlands are closed to the public at night. That is completely understandable. You don’t want to burden the already fragile nocturnal ecosystems any further. But with Wendell Berry in mind, we could think about ways we can get into the dark without disturbing too much. Some areas and seasons are more suitable for this than others, it is worth charting them well.
Walking in the night
In the past two years I’ve taken about one hundred and fifty night walks and I can’t believe I let the darkness pass me by for half a lifetime. Like many people, I mainly associated the night with discomfort. I have now experienced how rich the hours are when people are just a little less present. There is room for other creatures, smells, sounds.
In a sense you become a different being yourself. When the light fades, your pupils dilate. The black of the eyes opens to let in more light. That also happens when you marvel. Or startled. Or fall in love instantly. The moments when the world wakes you up, you are fully present.
During the day, your cones are especially active, the parts of the pupil that respond to light and allow you to see well into the distance. At night, the center of gravity shifts to the rods in your eye, which improve your peripheral vision. In this way the night opens your view, shows you the world in width.
In light-addicted societies, the rods appear to be severely underdeveloped. In doing so, we lose an aspect of our perception: exploring and scanning.
Those who want to train the rods can start with that tonight. It is the 53rd Night of the Night and in various places in the country you can go into the dark under supervision. If you live in the north, I recommend the night garden by architect and night activist Nynke-Rixt Jukema. A place specially designed for nocturnal animals and night bloomers, where the natural reflection of a shell path points the way to a wonderful world of shades of gray. That’s another way to do it.
This piece was written courtesy of lighting designer Iris Dijkstra and architect Nynke Rixt Jukema.