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Night Blight
Introduction
Dark skies define rural night time landscape, and are in contrast to the characteristic pink glow of the skies above urban areas. This "glow" spilling upwards into the sky from artificial lighting prevents us from viewing many of our stars and planets. We should all be able to view over 2000 stars with the naked eye. Yet light pollution means most of us can only see a fraction of that number and many of our children have never seen our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
Our National Night Blight Campaign forced the Government to take the issue seriously by highlighting the scale of this growing problem. Using satellite data from the US Air Force weather satellites we can see that light pollution is spreading into rural areas at an alarming rate.
The South East map shows how light pollution has increased in Sussex in recent years.
Action
We are delighted that the Government has made intrusive lighting a statutory nuisance.
The UK's first law tackling light pollution came into force on the 6th April 2006. After several years of campaigning and lobby of government CPRE are delighted that the problem of bad lighting joins noise and smells as a Statutory nuisance under the Environment Protection Act 1990. Find out more on how you can take action under this new law.
In the meantime, we have been working with some Local Authorities in Sussex to address the issue. Our information sheet 'Together lets Fade Out Light Pollution' summarises the facts and suggests ways, as individuals we can tackle light pollution in our community.
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