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WHO’S AFRAID OF THE DARK? HONG KONG’S LIGHT POLLUTION PROBLEM Opinions, rants and random outbursts. By Mrs Backfire
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id you happen to see that super blue blood moon a month ago? Me neither! Admittedly, I would’ve had a better chance to admire this unique lunar occurrence if I’d been in the middle of a Sai Kung Country Park. Instead I was out to dinner in Wan Chai, home to neon and skyscrapers, where night is day and the day never ends. A clear-eyed view of celestial bodies, as most Hongkongers know by now, is a rare occurrence in our light-polluted urban environment. That night, my odds of witnessing a luminous ‘moon’ of the drunken human variety were much higher. I’ve often wondered why Hong Kong is so brightly-lit, even in neighborhoods far from the nightlife districts. Several years ago, we lived down the hill from a huge building site at the end of Conduit Road. We were a few hundred meters from the Morning Trail, a fairly quiet part of Midlevels. And yet, at night when I’d walk the dog before bed, that building site was lit up like Christmas. Safety beams every meter along the site hoarding and a 24-7 flashing red and yellow sign at the entrance to direct the cement trucks (in case one showed up at midnight I guess). This was in addition to the public streetlamps installed every 20 meters or so along the footpath.
Our urban sky has been measured as 1,000 times brighter
Late at night, the OTT illuminance gave this corner of Hong Kong an odd gleam of paranoia. Night lights for monsters that never materialized. It won’t surprise you to know that, according to a Hong Kong University study, the territory’s light pollution is the ‘worst in the world’. Our urban sky has been measured as 1,000 times brighter than international norms. When the HKU findings were released in 2013, study leader Jason Chun-Shing Pun said part of the problem lay with the government’s overzealous fixation on public safety. Which kind of makes our troublesome skyglow a chicken-
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Without light, would monsters run amok?
egg problem: without light, would monsters run amok? Yes, no, maybe. We all feel more secure on a well-lit street, but what price do we pay for the constant gleam of vigilance? The Hong Kong Night Sky Brightness Monitoring Network (NSN), which was established after a comprehensive academic survey of light pollution in Hong Kong, says that outdoor-dwellers i.e. animals suffer the most from light pollution. Birds, insects, turtles – whether nocturnal or diurnal – experience severe difficulties while migrating, foraging and laying eggs due to lights at night. Humans, too, struggle to get a good night’s sleep without complete darkness. The bedtime blackout being the trigger for the hormones that facilitate sleep. So, we’re protected in our low-crime city but absolutely exhausted! What to do? The NSN recommends three strategies: 1. reducing as many useless outdoor lights as possible (whereby the definition of ‘useless’ may vary, depending on if you’re a nearsighted granny, club kid or opportunistic burglar!); 2. modifying or redesigning existing lights to make them more dark-sky friendly; and 3. choosing, from the get-go, lighting sources that the NSN classifies as ‘astronomicalfriendly’. Isn’t that an intriguing hyphenated phrase to ponder? Astronomical-friendly. Could it mean both cosmic and planetary as well as excessive and exorbitant? Sky-high in so many senses of the word and a perfect phrase for Hong Kong. I mean, property prices here are ‘astronomical-friendly’. As are most bottles on a Southside cafe wine menu. Also, a la carte items at Japanese restaurants and the French cheese at CitySuper, which Mrs Backfire indulges in whenever the freelance cheques clear. I propose we market complete darkness as an ‘astronomical-friendly’ experience.
Stargazing and saving birds as 2018’s Must Do Experiences. We can encourage people to demand a full night’s sleep too – total slumber immersion – in much the same way that Russian place near the escalator used to let us drink vodka in a freezer while wearing fur. Da! We’ll overcome Hong Kong’s fear of the dark with another phrase we love: it’s trendy! One glance at The New York Times’ article – Sleep Is the New Status Symbol – and I’m sure we’ll have everyone hooked. ‘Sleep is the new sex,’ says the article, and ‘sleep is a Human Potential Enhancer’. A sign of success! (Did you know that?) But most importantly, like any on-point trend, good sleep requires lots of expensive gadgets. I think this blackout thing could really catch on here, don’t you?
Mrs Backfire is - in the words of John Hughes - a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal (well, just that one time and I do regret it). You can see me as you want to see me ;)