Eileen Kragie

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Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, Conversations about issues that matter.
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Here's your host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.
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I want to introduce you to Eileen Craigie of Dark
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Sky Friends. I have to tell you, Eileen before you
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explain what Dark Sky Friends is all about. For the
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first time, today, on my way into work, I saw
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a shooting star.
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And I.
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Keep track of when we're supposed to be seeing shooting stars,
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and I never see them. But overnight when I wasn't
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supposed to see one, and I mean it had a
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green tail. It was just fantastic and it was so
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appropriate that I'm going to be speaking with you this
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morning about Dark Sky Friends, which is what I lean.
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Well, it's such a pleasure to be meeting you and
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the on your show. Dark Sky Friends is an organization
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that I started about three years.
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Ago, maybe a little bit further back.
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It's to advocate for tight outdoor lighting ordinances and legislation.
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So if you want a little bit more.
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Background, h yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I had.
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I became an advocate for Dark Sky International, and we
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can talk about that a little bit more later. And
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then started my own organization to really focus on the
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legislation and the ordinances, and then we launched a Northern
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Virginia chapter of Dark Sky International here so I can
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talk a little bit more about them. But I really
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work support all the work they do, but really focus
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in on the local jurisdictions to improve or to enact
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outdoor lighting ordinances in legislation.
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Basically, you're talking about light pollution, which is a term
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I don't think most people have heard of, right right.
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It's a very underrecognized, if not unrecognized type of pollution,
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and it should, you know, personally, it should be elevated
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to the level of air and air pollution because it's
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that deadly and that dangerous. It's an intrusive out.
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You know, outdoor lighting.
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You what do you mean it's intrusive outdoor lighting. I
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mean we're you know, I'm broadcasting from New York City,
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where you know, we have skyscrapers, we have i mean
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Times Square, it's always lit up.
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It's the easiest way to think about as light pollution
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is when you look up and you can't see any stars.
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But well, that's New York City, all right, exactly, and
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it's a big city always and what's happened that's being
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growing and spreading out into the suburbs.
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And so you have as part of light pollution.
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You have sky glow, which is when it's the obscuring
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the view of the skies. You have light tress path,
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which is a huge problem. And that's when you have
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in truce of light that comes into your home. So
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you can think of a street light, a business light,
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your neighbor's light that comes into your bedroom or your
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home or into your property. And then we have things
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like the clutter, which is just a lot a bunch
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of lights together and hopefully let's I'm going to explain
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to the audience, they can't see it. If you can
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think about the light trespath that not only affects our health,
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but it also impacts all of our shared environments.
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So of course, wait a minute, so how does it
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affect our health? Because this is something that I wouldn't
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think of. It's huddainly a light pollution. I mean, this
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is like the norm is the norm in a big city.
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It affects all of our circadian rhythms. So it's everything
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from plants to insects, but our own own internal clock.
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So light pollution has been linked to cancers, breast and
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prostate obesity, diabetes, HYE, blood pressure, art disorders, anxiety depression
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of course, sleep disorders, and then there's finding links to alzheime.
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So the body of research is just.
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Growing and growing about how it affects our human health.
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What are you trying to do exactly with you mentioned legislation,
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but I haven't even heard of any legislation concerning light pollution.
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Well, it's kind of It's interesting because the auto bond
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has been successful in getting some legislation in New York
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City to turn off the lights for the spring and
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the fall bird.
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Migration that I've heard of.
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Yeah, so they turning the lights down or turning off
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some of them. And with the tribute light to nine
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to eleven.
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What happens with that is the birds, the grating birds.
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Navigate by the stars in the moon, and so they're
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drawn off course. And this is the problem with the
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light pollution in the cities. They're drawn off course and
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then they either fly around the light and get exhausted
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and fall down and die, or they hit the buildings.
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And so the autumbne in.
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Different groups, the bird alliances have been very active and
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going out to collect the dead birds and count them
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after some of these situations. So going back to the
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tribute light for nine to eleven, they were finding that
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it's in the fall, that's in the middle of the
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bird migration, so these birds would get caught in the
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light that get attracted to it, and they would justly
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around and around and around and.
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Just get exhausted.
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So they were the autubon was successful and maybe some
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other organizations working with it there to have them turn
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it off. So just say the lights on for twenty minutes,
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they see the birds collecting, they'll shut it off for.
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Maybe five minutes.
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I'm going to tell you, I don't know exactly what
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the frequency.
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You know, I didn't even realize that because I'm very
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familiar with that with the Towers of Light, you know,
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to pay tribute to nine to eleven, and it's hugely
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important to me and so many in the area. But
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I had no idea that they reached this agreement where
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it's turned off for a little bit of time so
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that the birds can find their way again. I didn't
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even know this was going on.
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Yeah, and they've got I mean, this is something that
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is great to have these examples because then I can
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use them. You know, here in the Washington, DC area.
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In Chicago, there was a terrible incident in McCormick Place
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wherever a thousand birds were killed in one night hitting
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the building. It was a confluence of like the weather,
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the migration. They didn't close their shades and so that
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was just a horrendous incident. And I'm trying to think
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there was one other one that was pretty big. But
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they since have taken measures to make sure that it
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doesn't happen again, and they're easy, you know, easy things
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to do.
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Like I'm speaking with Eileen Craigie and she is with
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Dark Sky Friends, which is based in DC. But you
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are also linked to International Dark Sky So what is that.
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Well, that used to be the International Dark Sky Association,
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but they now it's Dark Sky International. It's a group
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that was started in nineteen eighty eight by two astronomers,
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one professional and on amateur astronomer because they recognize the
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problem of light pollution was coming.
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The astronomers where the Canaries and the.
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Coal mine in the nineteen seventies who saw this coming
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and so there was a lot of action taken out
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west where these big observatories are and they have just
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been working since nineteen eighty eight to try to raise
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awareness and educate people about light pollution. Dark Sky International
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designates dark Sky places. So you have dark sky parks,
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you have dark sky sanctuaries, dark sky reserves, have dark
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Sky communities, and there's also a category for places that
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don't quite meet dark sky park status because they're located
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in more light polluted places. So what's exciting is so
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many people across a globe they want to protect and
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preserve and conserve these areas. For example, I think they
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have the largest.
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Largest dark sky reserve.
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In the world because they kept adding to my Big
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Ben Park. Virginia, where I live, because I'm actually about
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ten miles outside of Washington, Virginia has the largest number
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of dark sky parks of any state east of the Mississippi,
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and George Mason University has one of the largest on
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campus observatories on the East coast. Out on Long Island,
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there's all kinds of astronomy societies and there's people all
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over doing this work. So there's an advocate out on
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Long Island. I think her name is Susan Harder. If
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I'm remembering that correctly. Well, she comes from Brooklyn and
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she moved out to Long Island, and because of a
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light trespass problem with her neighbor, she got involved with
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this and in fact created a cool.
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Little What is light trespassing?
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A light tress pass is when you have light that
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just shines into your house or into your yard. So
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if you can think about if you know, whether it's
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a street light that's outside your bedroom window, or maybe
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your neighbor has a spotlight and they flip that on.
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It can be a.
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Business that's next to you, or I know that I
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was talking with somebody who lives in an apartment and
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they were saying the business across the way or the
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garage that the lights were unshielded and they just shine
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straight out and pardon me, into their home.
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So that's light trespass.
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And what are you supposed to do about that?
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Well, ideally you'll have the person who's causing it use
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put on shielded lights or maybe turn them off. I'm
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really adamant about the victim of the trespass should not
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have to be the one that's tasked with taking care
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of it. So frequently people say we'll get blackout curtains,
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or closure shaped, or they'll say move.
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Well, okay, that's.
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Okay for humans, but what about the birds and the
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fireflies and the bats and the nocturnal creatures. They have
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absolutely no choice in this Dark Sky International created in
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conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society. They've developed the five
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Principles of Responsible Outdoor Lighting. So these are just five
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really simple principles of how to correct this issue.
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And you want me to go through.
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All five of them yet, I'm sure you okay.
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The first one is what's the purpose of the light?
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Is it useful? Why is it there? I love that.
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I started listening to lighting designers and they talk about
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let's start with dark and then you add light to
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enhance it or to create a mood, and I love that.
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So the first thing is do you need the light?
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And first we all need some light to traverse our
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spaces safely. Then the second thing is, which is really important,
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is to make it targeted, so shielded and if you
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can think about like put a lampshade on it, it's
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the easiest way to kind of think about it. So
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instead of having an unshielded bulb, just put something on
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it that's going to direct the light down towards the
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ground instead of shooting it up into the sky or
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into your neighbor's bedroom, you know, or into the the
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owl or the little bird's nest. The third one is
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low level, So this is your talk. We're talking about
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the intensity of the light. So you can think about
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really bright spot lights versus you know, I.
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Like more muted muted lighting.
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So the brightness of it when you get into this
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is a slightly technical term, but it's lumens. So when
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you go to look at lighting and when you look
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to for lighting bulbs, lumens is very important. So the brightness,
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the brighter, that bigger the loom and the brighter it is.
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The next thing is controlled, so you want to add dimmers, timers,
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motion activators. So if you're not out there and you
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don't need it, whise it on when you come home
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and you're walking in. It's great to have the light
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come on when you need it or if a passer
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by comes by. It's wonderful, but you ask yourself, do
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you have to have it on one hundred percent of
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the time. And the last thing is the color of
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the bulb. So if you can think about the color
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of fire, or candles, which is kind of a warm
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color amber that's just much more friendly to the environment,
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to insects, to the turtles. There's a whole thing about
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baby hatching turtles, and boy, some of the tightest ordinances
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you'll find here on these coastal areas, so they use
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red lighting and amber lighting. What happens with that baby
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hatch and turtles is they hatch and they're supposed to
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be usin the moon light to follow out to the ocean,
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but instead they get attracted to the community or the
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town behind them, and then whether they're picked off by
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predators or maybe they're crossing the roads and they get
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run over, but it's often not a very good outcome
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for them.
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We're running out of time. So how will people Yeah,
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it goes first, how do people find out more so
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they can access the dark sky areas and more on
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what they can do about light pollution. Where do they go?
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I lean online?
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Well, you can check out dark Sky Friends. Don't forget
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the s on the end of that dot org and
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they go to darksky dot org.
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You can look up your local chapter.
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I'm happy to talk to anybody about it, but there's
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chapters all over the Globe.
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There's one in New York, so please check out dark.
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Sky New York and there's some great advocates doing things there.
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There's also a dark Sky Park in Cherry Springs, New Jersey,
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so maybe that's close to some of your listeners. And
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Terry Springs for Cherry Hill and it's Terry Springs.
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I've never even heard of it. Okay, we are out
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of time. I want to thank you so much, Eileen Craigie,
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dark Skyfriends dot org.
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You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
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of New York's classic rock Q one O four point three.