Environmentalists Claim Night Skies are Being Polluted by Light

By Audrey Hudson May 29, 2013

The National Park Service has created a federal agency to “conserve our heritage of starry skies.”….Environmentalists have seized upon a new weapon in their battle against energy development warning that bright lights from coal and fracking operations are polluting the darkness of night skies over national parks located several miles away.  The enthusiasm to protect dark nights as a “vanishing resource” has also captured the imagination of the National Park Service, which has created a relatively new federal agency to “conserve our heritage of starry skies.”

In fact, darkness is now part of the federal government’s mission in the park service’s “call to action” to move the agency into its second century of operations.  The “Starry Starry Night” program will “lead the way in protecting natural darkness as a precious resource and create a model for dark sky protection by establishing America’s first Dark Sky Cooperative on the Colorado Plateau …”Environmentalists and the federal government are using the light pollution argument in their attempts to limit the expansion of a Utah coal operation that provides one-quarter of the electricity used by the city of Los Angeles…..To Read More…..