Photo by Carl TerHaar

I just returned from a week with my family in Sedona, AZ, enjoying the sunshine and its famously magnificent red rocks. I also spent a lot of time gazing at something that I can't typically see in Vancouver – a sky bursting with stars, planets, the milky way and a gorgeous moon.

Sedona is one of the few communities in North America – and the world – that is making formal efforts to preserve its night sky. It even made things official in August 2014, when it was designated the world's eighth International Dark Sky Community by the International Dark Sky Association.

The Association, based in Tucson, AZ, is the recognized authority on light pollution and established its International Dark Sky Places conservation program in 2001 to recognize communities and parks that work to preserve the night sky, which is increasingly under threat from glaring city lights.

"Scientists estimate that in about 10 years, America will have only three dark patches of land where people will be able to clearly see the Milky Way," wrote Megan Finnerty in feature for the Arizona Republic.

Since the Dark Sky program began, eight Communities, 17 Parks and eight Reserves have received International Dark Sky designations .

The Grand Canyon National Park is also a International Dark Sky Park (Photo by Justin Kern)

The IDA promotes the idea of "light what you need, when you need it."  While they agree that some light at night is necessary for safety and recreation, they work with communities to develop outdoor lighting standards and provide energy-efficient options that "direct the light where you want it to go, not uselessly up into the sky."

According to the Association, human-produced light pollution not only hampers our view of the stars; poor lighting threatens astronomy, disrupts ecosystems, affects human circadian rhythms, and wastes energy to the tune of $2.2 billion per year in the U.S. alone.

"We are not saying turn out the lights," said John Barentine in a Vancouver Sun interview, the program director for the Dark-Sky Association. "When it comes to public safety, lighting is necessary. We are asking, however, 'Is this light necessary?' and if it is not, turn it off or turn it down. In many cases we tend to overlight places."

As a designated Dark Sky Community, Sedona will comply with outdoor lighting codes, adopt light curfews for city-owned lighting, prohibit new roadway lighting on city public rights-of-way (except for safety reasons), and educate the public on dark sky compliant lighting. Sedona also has set aside funds for lighting retrofit projects by providing small grants to encourage business and commercial property owners to voluntarily bring their grandfathered outdoor light fixtures into compliance with the ordinance. 

Vancouver Supermoon (Photograph by: Chivi Tran)

Meanwhile in Vancouver, a similar ordinance is being contemplated. A few months ago, Vancouver City Council unanimously passed a motion to develop recommendations for an outdoor lighting strategy to reduce light pollution in the city.

"Until the turn of the 19th century, evening brought an end to many of mankind's activities," said Councillor Elizabeth Ball, who wrote the motion passed by Council. "Current lighting conditions go beyond the "basic requirement of providing illumination simply for the task at hand."

According to a Vancouver Sun article, Ball wants the city to bring in a strategy for shielding lights, reducing unnecessary glare and switching to more ecologically friendly sources of illumination. That includes encouraging homeowners and private building owners to turn out, shield or direct lights to specific tasks, rather than letting them beam out into the universe.

"I am talking about all light. The lights stuck on the backs of buildings that go directly up into the sky, the floodlights on so many of our buildings downtown that aren't aimed correctly, and other unnecessary lights," she said. "I am not talking about taking away the creative use of light or reducing public safety."

Other Canadian municipalities such as Saanich, BC, and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, have adopted measures to preserve the night sky, but Vancouver is the largest Canadian city to consider an abatement program. Larger mega-cities like New York and Los Angeles are spending millions to retrofit street lights.  Future improvements could even include on-demand lighting in which the proximity of pedestrians and vehicles trigger otherwise dimmed street lights to turn on, and then dim again after they pass.

This map shows light pollution illustrates the intensity of light that spreads from cities and towns. The white and red areas are the brightest. The gray and blue areas are the darkest.

While there are significant cost savings to reducing light pollution, the benefits of being able to see a picturesque night sky are beyond measure. I remember a time when I was a child living in the suburbs of Vancouver, and my friend and I would have sleepovers on her trampoline in the summertime. We would spend hours looking up at the night sky, watching satellites roam around and wishing on shooting stars (they happen all the time if you look long enough).

I am not sure if this is even possible today, but it could be if cities did more to reduce the increasing glare from unnecessary lights emanating from billboards, strip malls and other forms of light pollution.

We are an urban world. And just as we need access to trees, parks and nature in our cities, we also need a opportunity to see the stars.

Los Angeles without light pollution. Photo by Thierry Cohen, whose illustrates what cities would look like with the night sky. He photographs major cities, noting the precise time, angle, and latitude and longitude of his exposures. He then shoots the sky at the same angles from remote places at the same latitude, and digitally combines the images to show what the night sky would look like if we could turn out the lights.