Dear Julia and others,

late but still:

my chief, perhaps the only goal at the gathering in hotel Vienna, is achieving a major step in the needed direction: we should say, as experts, what is vital for stopping the growth of nighttime lighting.

Defining the problem itself, to make it measurable and verifiable, is a must.

So, my main speech (20 min including discussion, to be held at the very beginning of the meeting) could be named:

"Let's stand up and say: Light at night is a pollutant

For laypeople, it may be difficult to think of light as of a damaging dirt. Isn't it the very symbol of goodness? Yeee... but a false one. The proper natural variation of day and night is the real blessing.

Compromising a true night by artificial lighting is pollution. As with CO2 – which is the worst pollutant ever, destroying the very livability of our planet – there is and will be a a loud opposition to such an attitude, well paid by fossil industry.

We should be loud too. And ask the IDA, at the first place, to reconcile itself with the notion that all outdoor lighting is polluting. The less light the better. No industry-developed standards should dictate us how we should use it. Common sense and science (like physiology) should be our only help.

The lecture should persuade the participants to accept a declaration saying just several things which are based in science and common sense. The main one is a demand that IDA abandons its disastrous course led by maldefining light pollution. Because of that maldefinition, no standard measures can be taken. Unlike with all other kinds of pollution.

For a wording of declaration written a year ago in Osnabrück, see http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/declaration/"

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                              Jan Hollan, Ph.D.
CzechGlobe - Global Change Research Centre of the Acad. Sci. Czech Rep.

AdMaS - Advanced Materials, Structures and Technologies Centre of 
the Brno University of Technology

 			           home:
Lipová 19, 602 00 Brno                              +420 5 43 23 90 96

              volunteer of the Ecological Institute Veronica
Panská 9, 602 00 Brno, Czechia                  http://www.veronica.cz

e-mail: hollan@ped.muni.cz              http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik
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