Starlight & Fireflies Episode 0.1 - Introducing...

Written By Gabrielle

SHOW NOTES/Links to things you might be interested in:

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

[soft piano music intro]

Welcome to Episode Zero Point One of Starlight and Fireflies, a podcast dedicated to understanding and ending the harmful effects of Artificial Light At Night.

Happy Earth Day, 2020!! I don’t know about you, but this was NOT how I was expecting Earth Day 2020 to go. I was envisioning an entire coordinated lead up and launch and then… COVID-19 hit.

And we’ve been thrown together into a collective and global crisis not seen for a century. We can turn to history for lessons, and to science for guidance - and, eventually I am certain, solutions. But that takes time, and in the meantime, we can help each other and reach out as much as we can while maintaining our 6-ft distance, and drop off groceries for our neighbors and send care packages to our loved ones and all of the things, great and small, that we are doing to maintain our humanity.

We are also grieving an unfathomable loss. The loss of life and normalcy is bad enough but a loss of the sense of a predicable future is wrenching, and we help each other through that, too.

And… at the very end of it we have to recognize, that the world is not going back to the way it was before COVID-19.

In the shadow of such times, suddenly, talking about light pollution’s effects on us and our ecosystems seemed a bit ridiculous and I honestly wondered about the wisdom of starting Starlight and Fireflies at this exact moment in history.

But here’s why it’s important, right now:


The status is not quo, and it will never be again. This virus is spreading across the planet like wildfire, it’s a shock to every social and economic system we have, and as it goes along it is revealing the hidden flaws in our current structures, the faults we have not examined in our thinking. It has exposed the inescapable and the inherent connectivity each of us has with everyone and every thing else.

It has awakened us to the reality that we exist in a web of systems - ecological, economic, social, political - and with every thing stripped down to its bare essence, we can really LOOK and see what and who these systems are helping. Who’s it harming? Not just humans, but the rest of the planet, too.

In the process of examination and rebuilding we have the opportunity to REALLY LOOK at the systems and behaviors that we have accepted as “normal” and even beneficial and ask if they are really normal or actually beneficial - for ourselves OR for the planet.

The way we light our outdoor spaces - and our indoor spaces - is a perfect example of the type of systems that need to be reworked. For one, our current ways of thinking about lighting - even when we try to be mindful of our environmental impact! - is helping to destroy our already-climate-change-stressed ecosystems and as a result our food webs are under threat - it’s just one more stressor.

Instead of humanity harnessing the power of light and the amazing new technologies to light our spaces efficiently and thoughtfully, we have simply added a quantity and quality of light that is blocking out the stars for the majority of us, and upsetting in some way the activity of every ecosystem that we’ve bothered to check.

So why is this important in the midst of a global pandemic?

Briefly, the reason this podcast is called “Starlight and Fireflies” is because I believe Starlight Is A Birthright, and because Fireflies are the charismatic microfauna that can help bring attention to the ways that Artificial Light At Night effects our ecosystem.
I’d say they are the canary in the coal mine, but it’s more like they are the pollinator in the invasive monoculture. We’ll get into that in later episodes.
ButfFireflies are really just a shorthand for ALL of the ecological effects of Artificial Light At Night and light pollution - every part of an ecosystem is effected by ALAN. The earth evolved in a day/night cycle - there are no organisms living on the planet’s surface that does not respond to light in some way. Some of those effects are obvious, some are subtle - but it’s inescapable.


And the night sky beyond that is a source of wonder, and awe, and connection - all of which are sorely needed in a time when everything feels dark, and frightening, and lonely.

Gazing at the stars is an inherent reminder that you are NOT alone, you are a part of a vast and wondrous cosmos and that our tiny, little, fragile blue dot is precious and truly unique in our known universe.

One of the great unifiers of humanity is the sky. Our myths and legends, our collective stories and dreams, are written on and among the stars, and they LAST while they’re up there.
We know, in 2020 North America, about Castor and Pollux and Sirius and Orion and the Milky Way pouring across the sky out of Cassiopeia’s upturned vessel - all stories woven into the stars 2500 years ago by the Greeks, and carried over into Western European knowledge traditions ever since.
EVERY CULTURE has their own star and sky myths. Some of those legends have surprising commonalities, even among cultures continents and oceans apart, and that’s a whole ‘nother episode.

But humanity has been directly driven forward by our collective stargazing habits. From ancient mariners navigating by stars to the riddles of creation starting to be revealed and unraveled by the astrophysicists of our times, our development as a species is tied to the stars. Ironically, it’s also tied to our use of light (aka fire) and one is threatening the other right now.

For most of us the comfort and connection we can find in the beauty of stargazing has been much diminished by light pollution. Even outside the urban centers where light pollution is worst, the Milky Way has dimmed and often only the brightest stars shine, if at all. 83% of the human population lives under light-polluted skies.

Part of our human birthright - that starry night sky - has been taken from us through simple collective thoughtlessness and inaction.
To be clear, we pollute the skies with light not out of some evil impulse, but as an unintended consequence of a different objective - usually safety, or because it’s pretty.

But those externalities, no matter how inadvertent, have still fundamentally changed our world and the way humans relate to the universe.

No person, or company, or city, should have the right to take away the stars from anyone, and that’s what is happening. THE STARS BELONG TO ALL OF US.

What’s even MORE important about this is that every photon that is directed where it doesn’t need to be is a COLOSSAL waste of energy. Those Earth-at-night-maps, the ones that show the city lights as photographed from space? They’re really pretty, right? Until you realize that every single pinpoint of light is nothing but COMPLETELY WASTED ENERGY.

Wasted energy, in a world we desperately need to reduce our fossil fuel and energy consumption in order to mitigate climate change.

The good news is:

This form of pollution, and all of its knock-on effects from hurting our health and damaging our food webs and changing our ecosystems, and contributing to climate change, is in many ways one of the simplest things to change.

Just turn the lights off.

We don’t even need to clean anything up! It’s not like an oil spill, or a Superfund site!
Once we remove the damaging light and give it a little bit of time, things can heal!

We don’t need to wait for this crisis to pass to begin. We don’t need to hold meetings or break quarantine or distancing protocol. We DO need to take stock of how we use light and ask ourselves what’s ACTUALLY needed.

You can start tonight.

Turn off your porch light, or the decorative sconce on the side of your house or garage.
Turn off the lights in the rooms you’re not using - though, I will concede, that may not be many at all if you’ve got a full house due to quarantine!

But just keep turning that one light off every day this week - turn off more than one if you want, but begin rebuilding the “turn the lights off” habit.

Throughout the run of this podcast I will keep sharing ways you can continue to limit your light pollution footprint, make your spaces happier and healthier, and help our ecosystems adapt to and recover from human activity.

So what finally pushed me to launch this little podcast in the middle of global chaos was that this information is especially important now, as we’re spending a lot more time in and around our homes for the foreseeable future. It seems imperative to make sure that our home lighting is not actively harming us - or our backyard ecosystems.

So next episode, we’ll start to dive in to questions I get asked a lot: What’s the big deal about blue light at night? Is it really that bad? And isn’t it enough that I don’t look at my phone after 10pm?

NOPE. It’s not just our devices, not just our screens, and it matters to our health a WHOLE LOT.

ALAN has been linked to everything from exacerbating anxiety and PTSD, to throwing off our circadian rhythms, contributing to obesity and diabetes. It’s even been linked to increased cancer rates. I mean I know that sounds especially tin-foil-hat-ish, but artificial light at night - especially in the blue spectrum - is a public health issue writ large. While it may seem like the LAST thing we want to do is tackle another public health crisis in the middle of the mother of all public health crisises:

The GOOD news is, we can do something about THIS ONE on a PERSONAL level immediately, or nearly so.

We’ll talk about it in Episode One: Blue Light: What and Where and Why It Matters; it’s available for download at starlightandfireflies.com (all one word) and in your favorite podcast aggregator.

In the coming weeks and months, we won’t just talk about“blue light”;
We’ll talk about all aspects and effects of Artificial Light At Night: street lighting and satellites, and what it does to insects and songbirds and turtles and corals and ecology and circadian rhythms. We’ll talk about light therapy and the common ways we misuse light. We’ll talk about design considerations for our indoor and outdoor spaces, and answer questions like “Why do the light bulbs I just installed in my living room, why do they feel really weird?” or “What’s the best sort of landscaping design I can do in my backyard to help our pollinator populations?”
We’ll talk to experts and we’ll look at the latest science.

I also promise that I will NOT talk about COVID-19 unless it is critical to what I’m trying to tell you; consider this podcast a short, information-packed respite from COVID info because I will do my absolute best to make it that way.

You can check out the show notes from all of our episodes or linked readings at starlightandfireflies.com

If you have questions or comments, you can shoot me an email at podcast@starlightandfireflies.com.

And upcoming episodes will be posted on starlightandfireflies.com, and you can find us on your favorite podcast stream.


Until next time, stay safe, stay sane, and remember the stars belong to everyone.

[soft piano outro]

Gabrielle
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Episode 0.2 - Who I Am and Why I Do This