Eastern Bluebird
I was thinking about Earth Hour on the way home from work last night. It was around 7:30 p.m. and, as usual, lights were on in closed shops, office towers and picture windows everywhere. I thought a little about the benefits of having a darker night. Here are a few; let me know if you can think of others.
1. Fewer birds will die. I know that Toronto’s mayor, David Miller, encourages office towers to turn off the lights at night with the Lights Out program. The problem: When lights are on in a building, birds see the rooms inside as open spaces to fly into. Since many bird populations are in serious decline, it would be great if we could help more of them survive. Here’s a Homemakers story on building birdhouses for native songbirds.
2. You can get a better night’s sleep. Ambient light from street lights and other sources keeps us from sleeping deeply. In our new house, my partner and I use blackout cloth behind our bedroom curtains to block out the street light’s orange glow.
3. Star gazing. I used to have a great piece of software called MPj Astro. Fabulous for the mid ’90s, it would show you the night sky for your location, in whatever direction you wanted to look, and label whatever you liked. These days I could really only use it to find out what’s there, behind a wall of light. But I think I’ll see if I can find it and load it on my machine before Earth Hour — a window of an opportunity to try it out again.
What other fringe benefits are you expecting from Earth Hour?
