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Most of us are familiar with air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and noise pollution. But it turns out that light can also be a pollutant as well.

Light pollution is a consequence of industrial civilization. Sources of light pollution include building interior and exterior lighting, advertising billboards, factories, commercial properties, streetlights, and sporting venues.

According to findings in a new report from the University of Exeter, artificial nighttime lighting has a wide range of effects across the natural world and should be limited wherever possible. The research team analyzed more than 100 studies and found that artificial lighting has widespread impacts on both animals and plants.

In the study, which was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., researchers consistently found changes to animals’ bodies and behavior as a result of artificial lighting. In particular, levels of the sleep cycle-regulating hormone melatonin were reduced by exposure to artificial lighting at night in all animal species studied.

Exposure to artificial nighttime lighting also affected the timing of animals’ activities. For rodents, which are largely nocturnal, the duration of activity was often reduced by exposure to nighttime lighting. On the other hand, for diurnal birds, exposure to nighttime lighting led to an extension of the duration of their activities.

Previous studies have found other wide-ranging impacts of nighttime lighting, from reducing pollination by insects to trees budding earlier in spring.

Artificial nighttime lighting is human driven and very disruptive to the natural world. While there’s no off switch for the planet, we could reduce the amount of light pollution drastically with no impact on our lives.

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Artificial night lighting has widespread impacts on nature

Photo, posted July 29, 2017, courtesy of spacedust2019 via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

During this year’s Super Bowl, at least three car companies – GM, Porsche, and Audi – ran commercials for plug-in cars. This is a sign that automakers are ramping up their efforts to persuade the public that electric cars really are the future.

The auto industry is investing billions of dollars to develop electric vehicles, spurred by stricter emissions rules in places like California and concerns about climate change. In fact, more than 100 new plug-in models are expected to become available in the United States over the next five years.

In Europe, electric cars are increasingly popular. Norwegians, for example, buy more electric cars than gas cars. And several European countries have banned the sale of gas cars starting in 2025.

But in the US, enthusiasm for electric cars has been slow to build. Automakers sold fewer than 330,00 electric vehicles in the US in 2019 and more than half of those were from Tesla, which actually does not even advertise its vehicles.

The auto industry spent nearly $9 billion in national and local advertising in the US last year, but less than half a percent of that went toward promoting electric vehicles.

A big part of the problem is that car dealers are not very enthusiastic about selling electric cars, which require far less maintenance than conventional cars and have far fewer costly replacement parts to sell. As a result, the industry’s efforts to speed the transition to electric cars has been ambivalent at best.

World-wide, Tesla has sold about a million cars, mostly in the past 4 years, so there is clearly a growing demand for electric vehicles. It is up to the rest of the industry to create demand for the new cars they have committed to produce.

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Super Bowl Ads Hyped Electric Cars. But Will Anyone Buy Them?

Photo, posted October 6, 2018, courtesy of Mike Fonseca via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Artificial Light And Nature | Earth Wise

Most of us are familiar with air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, and noise pollution. But it turns out that light can also be a pollutant as well.

Web Links

Hyping Electric Cars | Earth Wise

During this year’s Super Bowl, at least three car companies – GM, Porsche, and Audi – ran commercials for plug-in cars. This is a sign that automakers are ramping up their efforts to persuade the public that electric cars really are the future.

Web Links