There has been much talk on this forum about light pollution:
spatny: ...overly bright lights spilling over into public areas...
spatny: The instances of private overbright lighting in this town are getting absurd if not obscene.
MikeTomecek: *the installation of the electric light in the cbd.
spatny: It's a shame so much light bounces into Riverside off the clouds now...
idic5: Let's replace the gas lamps for strong electric lights so that we can see the cars better.
elainemaria: ...our curvy streets, beautiful homes and lovely gas lamps (that ARE dark, but that's okay).
Catherine: ...downtown also ruined by bright light developers...
In the New Yorker August 20, 2007:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?printable=true
In Galileo's time, nighttime skies all over the world would have merited the darkest Bortle ranking, Class 1. Today, the sky above New York City is Class 9, at the other extreme of the scale, and American suburban skies are typically Class 5, 6, or 7. The very darkest places in the continental United States today are almost never darker than Class 2, and are increasingly threatened. For someone standing on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on a moonless night, the brightest feature of the sky is not the Milky Way but the glow of Las Vegas, a hundred and seventy-five miles away. To see skies truly comparable to those which Galileo knew, you would have to travel to such places as the Australian outback and the mountains of Peru. And civilization's assault on the stars has consequences far beyond its impact on astronomers. Excessive, poorly designed outdoor lighting wastes electricity, imperils human health and safety, disturbs natural habitats, and, increasingly, deprives many of us of a direct relationship with the nighttime sky, which throughout human history has been a powerful source of reflection, inspiration, discovery, and plain old jaw-dropping wonder.
It's worth 10 minutes of your time to read the full story.