Light Pollution Reflection / Refraction Number 21
Posted August 28, 2008
WARNING:
I guarantee my reflections and refractions will create controversy and confrontation; and quite likely I'll step on many toes, but it's time to be brutally honest.
Rolling Rally!
On Tuesday, August 26th, 50 members of ICCI (Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement) embarked on a one-day "Rolling Rally," our ACTION to publicly express contempt for the corporate agribusiness practices increasing in Iowa and endorsed by the Iowa Pork Producers Association, the Farm Bureau, and most discouraging of all, Iowa State University.
This image shows how a REAL action is carried out! Send me your own images of your own ACTIONS opposing the SOBs (Satans of Brightness)! Get out there and have some fun turning off the lights--PERMANENTLY!
Yes, I know it's not about light pollution, but please be patient and read on:
The ACTION included four stops here in Ames, Iowa:
Stops 1 and 2. The office and home of Chad G., the chief official of the North Carolina based CAFO giant, Prestage Farms. Of course their website doesn't show the damage they cause! Chad barricaded himself in his office and no one was home.
Stop 3. Republican Congressman Tom Latham's office, an agribusinessman himself, who endorses CAFOs and who's blind to the damage they cause Iowa and Iowans. His office shares a wall with Prestage's! Hmmm! Tom was "out of the office." Off vacationing, no doubt.
Stop 4. The office of the Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University. We pressed her and the university to change its pro-corporate factory farm and corporate farming stance. At least she had the courage to meet with us!
"I hear you, Stargeezer, but what's all this CAFO crap (literally?) got to do with astronomy and light pollution?"
EVERYTHING!
ALL astronomers, and nonastronomers, too, mainstream dark sky orgs (IDA), the Astronomical League (AL), Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), etc., Sky & Telescope, ASTRONOMY, etc., and all unaffiliated astronomers out there: you must wake up and fight light pollution much more aggressively, NOW!!
When was your last "Rolling Rally" in opposition to light pollution? When did you last "protest publicly" about light pollution destroying your dark night sky? When was the last time any astronomical organization or dark sky organization got together and made a plan to walk community streets-- during the daylight hours, of course, knock on doors expressing eyeball-to-eyeball, your discontent and contempt for light pollution and your desire for EVERYONE in the community to have dark skies? When was the last time you did something beyond the same old tactics that have failed us astronomers so miserably?
Astronomers, y'all bellyache about light pollution, especially at star parties and meetings; but there's STILL very little action, very little getting things done! In short, when will all the astronomical orgs and publications, ALL astronomers, and nonastronomers who enjoy the dark night sky, step up and ACT together, ACT as one single entity, FIGHT light pollution?
The national news should be agog--falling all over itself--to report a wave of dark sky activism sweeping across the country, supernovas of astronomers erupting everywhere, whatever it takes (with a zillion different strategies) to demand dark skies--local, regional, national stories, a constant daily barrage of continuing stories! Not more of the same old boring stories about how the IDA wrote a law and it passed. Whoooop-de-doo!
Again: lighting laws and ordinances and all the blather on Capitol Hill with government officials will not eliminate one single watt of light pollution. There's only one solution to light pollution: To turn off lights...permanently!
Again: there'll be more (not less) light pollution tonight, next week, next month, next year....until YOU, the person reading my curmudgeonly words, steps up and does something! Using the same old tactics and techniques will result in the same old failures! Is that what you want?
Imagine, just imagine, what the AL officials and members who attended ALCON 2008 in downtown Des Moines only a month ago (July 2008) could have done to bring the topic, the issue, of light pollution to the residents of Des Moines and Iowa.
It's NOT the responsibility of the local astronomy club, the Des Moines Astronomical Society (DMAS) in this case, to make this happen! My god, didn't they have enough to do to make the meeting run smoothly, to be the success the September issue of the REFLECTOR, official magazine of the AL, just announced it was?
Right off the top of my head at any given moment I could think of at least 5 things the AL staff / membership / organization could have done in DMoines that would have cost the AL and the DMAS absolutely NOTHING, but would have netted local news coverage and more importantly, connections to actual residents of the community! Or is it that astronomers don't really want to "go public"? Don’t really want to publicly fight for their right to dark night skies? Don't really want to be able to observe in their own backyards and not have to drive hundreds, thousands of miles, to have dark skies? What is it with astronomers?
And it's not about money! It's about ACTION! Fighting light pollution the ACTION way requires very little money! Orgs think they have to have all manner of money to do anything... you know, like $1000 to start a new observing club? You have got to be kidding me, right? It's just an April Fool's joke in September, right?
Again, astronomers: hunkering down in the concrete bowels of a local corporate hotel chain during ALCON 2008, '09, '10, '11, '12, etc., blathering on about telescope equipment ("mine's bigger'n yours!") and observing skills ("I saw more Messier / NGC objects than you did!") and bellyaching about light pollution, doesn't do squat to lessen light pollution.
And what will the Astronomical League do for next year's ALCON meeting? Likely, more of the same! I see no sign whatsoever that they will be doing anything different, anything creative, anything ACTION ORIENTED, anything new, anything that will contribute to darker skies!
And how many high-ranking officials and "just plain members" of the AL, the ASP, etc., have read every word of my website, and are planning real and substantive change right now, in August 2008--change that will begin no later than December 2008? The official mission statements of the AL, the ASP, et al., don't contain a single word about light pollution! When will that change? When will these BIG, hierarchical orgs get it, press forward with all possible dispatch to Kill-A-Light, and eliminate light pollution...PERMANENTLY?
When will astronomers get it? When will they step up and take the DARK SKY INITIATIVE and the Dark Sky Pledge (Oops, I couldn't resist that tidbit of self-promotion!) and put an end to light pollution?
Look! Had ICCI members not been rallying, protesting, pushing, pulling and prodding, poking sticks at the CAFO industry members in their cages and their corporate and government shills for years, by now the whole state of Iowa would be nothing more than the land between two rivers--the Missis-stinky and Misery--and one giant stinking, manure-soaked lagoon, a statewide CAFO!
Astronomers: You must learn from orgs like ICCI. You must learn to fight back far more aggressively than you are now, or the stars will vanish VERY soon! Start tonight: poke some sticks at the SOBs (Satans of Brightness)!
Sometimes I wonder: Are Iowans not involved in the fight to protect the state from CAFOs so naive they think the corporate CAFO CEOs will build a few more confinements here in Iowa and then move on to greener pastures--oh, but wait, these CAFO hooligans don't use green pastures to feed pigs, do they?
Likewise, astronomers: are you so naive that you actually believe developers, realtors, corporate lighting CEOs, etc., will say, "Well, we've developed our way from sea to shining sea and put up enough lights. Perhaps we should stop Eating Earth and ruining everyone's dark night sky!"
Developers, et al., will NOT stop developing America until every square mile is developed, OR until WE (you and me!) put a stop to their Earth Eating feeding frenzy, and their Light Polluting ways!
Sunny Days and Milky Way Nights.
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NO EXCUSES! NO COMPROMISES! NO EXCEPTIONS!© Jack Troeger, Dark Sky Initiative. troegerj@raccoon.com