Episode 2.3: “Skyglow” is an Instagram Filter
Language shapes our thoughts which shape our actions- so let’s stop calling light pollution anything other than pollution.
SELECTED SOURCES:
TEDtalk re: language and cognition
Lera Boroditsky: How language shapes the way we think | TED Talk
Tom Scott video, with some additional interesting examples and also making the point that the cognitive link has a lot of evidence but not proven quite yet.
All The Colours, Including Grue: How Languages See Colours Differently - YouTube
Nice roundup of common euphemisms from a few years back:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome back to Starlight and Fireflies, a podcast dedicated to understanding and eliminating the harmful effects of artificial light at night. This is Episode 2.3, I know I skipped one, I’m not about to re-record everything just to fix the nomenclature. I’ll put up a bonus episode at some point and chuck it in there. ANYWAY, today I wanted to talk a bit about language and dark skies advocacy.
I’m going to preface all of this here that I’m talking about this firmly planted in mostly-American English; I have not delved into the ways in which other languages talk about light pollution (at least not yet).
The process of naming things has deep and broad implications, effecting pretty much all of human existence. There are numerous studies and books talking about the links between linguistics and cognition, I’ve got a link to a good summary TED talk at the website, along with the transcript of this show, as usual. So it’s not a radical thing to say that language, as humans, helps construct our view of reality by being the way we decode our sensed reality and then recode it into sounds and words.
Now, this sort of coding and decoding is marvelously useful; it is what makes ideas transmittable from one human brain to another. It helps us navigate our world - at the same time, it shapes our world. The words we use have weights and meanings attached to them - things are grouped according to any number of schema we might have. Associations between words and emotions can tip a descriptor from something that sounds benign and harmless - or even good! - to something that needs attention and action and could be harmful, so we need to mitigate it.
So with all that being said: I’d like to talk about the way we - Dark Sky Advocates of all stripes - use the word “skyglow” instead of “light pollution”.
I’m totally guilty of this, I talk about “skyglow” all of the time, not least of which because it’s a syllable shorter and it kind of rolls off the tongue. But that’s precisely the problem!
Skyglow sounds warm and fuzzy, like golden-hour Instagram filter or a soft twilight.
But it’s not beautiful, or benign. It’s pollution, and it’s just as pervasive as air or water pollution - and it spreads far beyond where it actually falls. As of 2016, 80% of the Earth’s population cannot see the natural night sky as a result of said pollution. I would actually bet my life it’s gotten worse since then.
I personally believe that because we use “skyglow” as shorthand, its easier to ignore light pollution than it is to ignore water or air pollution. Pollution is an accurate and attention-getting word, it spurs people to action.
To both be clear and to deviate a little bit through other examples: It’s not just ‘skyglow’, its other words in the environmental/conservation space. There is a public relations battle being waged in the English language between those interests which want to minimize the damage (and the outcry) being done to the environment and those who need the attention of the public in order to generate enough political will to hold destructive organizations accountable.
For example: Pollution and environmental destruction of all kinds in all sorts of industries gets repackaged broadly as “externalities”. The “slash and burn” of rainforests - which is a phrase I heard over and over again as a kid - has been replaced with the far more clinical “deforestation”.
Persistant polluters of air and water are admonished for “routine exceedences” by regulators, which is just a nice way of saying they won’t stop poisoning the environment around them even when they’ve been caught before.
I’m trying to think of water and air pollution euphemisms that are as rosy as “skyglow”. “Particulate” is about as neutral or clinical as a word for air pollution gets: smog, ozone, fumes, smoke, fog, vapors - all of those words tip on the negative side.
Water pollution has some doozies when it comes to doublespeak. Water at the end of the fracking process is called “produced water”, a hog-waste settling pond (itself a euphemism for “lake of shit”) is called a “lagoon”. Often, wastewater streams are simply called “discharge” in any number of contexts, but I gotta say “lagoon” takes the cake. It’s up there with “bio-waste” or “organic contaminants” to describe sewage in watersheds.
My personal favorite is “fugitive emissions”. Because I’m secretly twelve it just makes me think of a guy running from bloodhounds who can’t stop farting. In grown-up world, it’s the term used for leaks that happen at equipment or infrstructure, like natural gas pipelines.
OK, back to serious:
Describing “light pollution”, which can spread for miles and can have broad damaging effects on ecosystems and humans alike, as “skyglow”…. Can you see the issue here?
“Glow” is a word with overwhelmingly positive connotations. “You’re glowing!” “Get a healthy glow!” “It’s the glow-up!” In American culture, at least, ‘glowing’ is a signifier of health, beauty, and radiance.
Well, at least we got the “radiance’ part right.
As I said, this is a hard habit for me to break, too, but I would recommend that as advocates of Dark Skies that we remove “skyglow” from our lexicon. Always talk about light pollution instead. It isn’t as obvious as an oil slick or a smoking coal stack, but that doesn’t change the damage it can do. The sooner we stop softening the effects of it, the more we might be able to get people to understand what’s at stake.
So, yeah. Light pollution, not skyglow.
Because “skyglow” is an Instagram filter.
Until next time, remember: the stars belong to all of us.
