It never gets dark any more

Sep 10, 2007

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This is something I have bemoaned to Jax and others a number of times. I grew up in a place where if there was no moon at, you bumped into things because it was very dark. When I go outside at night here, there are streetlights, house lights and the reflections of lights off the clouds. I can’t remember when I was last anywhere really dark.

We were talking about it last night and then I saw today that the CPRE have today launched a campaign about “Intrusion” You can read more at the CPRE page. This is an animation of their maps showing the change over the last forty years.

Frankly, I think there are simply far to many people in England, when I looked up some stuff about population today I found that I am not the only person thinking this…..

â€œInstead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, maybe we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment.â€ David Attenborough. Attenborough is, I understand on concord with the Optimum Population Trust which “believes that Earth may not be able to support more than half its present numbers in the next century, and that the UK’s sustainable population level in the 22nd century may be as low as 30 million”.

Of course, we aren’t talking about the UK reducing its population…. Scotland has a poopulation density of 166 people to the square mile, Wales has a density of 366 to the square mile, whereas England, where most of the population lives, has a population density of 976 to the square mile. So it looks to me that there are simply to many English people. I am sure the Scots and Welsh will say that that has always been obvious to them.

If you have ever driven across France, it is apparent just how much space there is and I have always envied that. The population density in Metropolitan France (which has twice the land area of the UK) is only 289 to the square mile.

But mainly, I would just love to see a really dark night, now and then.

It’s where it is

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Comments

12 responses to “It never gets dark any more”

Chris (portico)
10 September 2007
Tim, always looking on the bright side of life. 😉
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Tim
10 September 2007
It is precisely the bright that I have the problem with!
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Tech
10 September 2007
I’m with on you this, and I live in (supposedly)one of the last *dark* areas of England. I happen think that it’s detrimental to our health; both mental and physical, to never have real darkness. Back off to the dark side again now 😉
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Nic
10 September 2007
It’s something we’ve talked about too. There have been odd places we’ve holidayed and so loved looking at the stars as total contrast to an otherwise inky black landscape. Driving up and down the country in the nighttime and seeing the light pollution from relatively small towns let alone cities and airports is staggering. I agree, bring on the dark nights!
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Allie
10 September 2007
Yep. D and I once spent the night on a cattle station in the middle of Australia – that was real night and the stars were amazing. Does anyone else remember the introduction of the orange street lights we have now? I seem to remember darker nights when I was a kid and the street lights just created a little puddle of white light.
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Tim
10 September 2007
Red sky at night. ****ing streetlights.
The village I grew up on had a streetlight on its village green, which was the most totally pointless affair. They switched it off at around chucking out time at the local pub, so if you had been out anywhere else and were a bit later home it would be off. But since it only had what looked like a 100 watt bulb in it, it didn’t make that much difference.
In fact this is where I lived until I was sixteen. It probably is still dark there even now.

View Larger Map
Although I expect every house in the village will have half a dozen PIR halogen floods outside which will light up like Baghdad on a bad night every time a hedgehog walks across their lawn.
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Ron
11 September 2007
Canada’s population denisty is approximately 3.5/sq km or 9/sq mi. New Brunswick is significantly higher than that with about 10.5/sq km.
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Tim
11 September 2007
Yes, that’s all very well, but the whole place is covered in snow for eleven months of the year and right next door to the USA for twelve months of the year.
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Merry
11 September 2007
Even Dartmoor isn’t as dark now as it was when i first used to go there with Max… it’s a shame. Still, some places seem to be trying to do things about it. Only 1 in 3 of our lights are switched on on the parkways here, which is good i think. Slightly darker roads encourages people to be a little more cuatious when driving, i think.
On the flip side, i hate feelnig scared to walk anywhere and if you live somewhere with places you can walk to (ie not where i live now) feeling safe enough to walk to the shop at 5pm on a winters night is a good thing.
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Ron
11 September 2007
I work with a gent who moved here from Germany this year. That was his perception of Canada before he got here as well 😀
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Tim
11 September 2007
Must admit I think that there must be an optimum, France is close to the EU population density average (the EU is about half the land area of the US, with about double the population, and about half the land area of Canada with fifty times the population). The Optimum Population Trust are saying we need to halve the current population worldwide, and although I have not given it an awful lot of thought, I can see where they are coming from.
Currently we have (from Wikipedia – World (land only) – 6,727,508,082 people – 134,682,000 sq km – 48 people/sq km =) 122.88 people to the square mile which really does seem rather a lot.
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Alison
16 September 2007
Have been in Cornwall this week, that was dark. We all noticed last night how feeble the stars at home looked compared to the ones we’d been admiring all week. Pembrokeshire’s pretty dark too.
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