Dark sky and the impact of light pollution is now part of the dialogue amongst the light and design community. It's not on every project, it's probably not on the minds of every designer, but the fact that we're here at the start of 2024, that it's part of the discussion in a major show like this, shows that we have made considerable progress, notwithstanding, we have a long way to go. Over a 12-year period, light pollution, the brightening of the night sky, had been changing every year by 10% per year Every year, 10% Every year.

So if you put it in context, over an eight-year period the night sky brightness has doubled and over. You know my son I've mentioned. My son is turning 17 this year. And essentially it means the sky that he was born under. If you go back to the same location today, you will see half as many stars in the sky today, which is a tremendous change, notwithstanding all the other changes going on in the world.

Welcome back to the Virtual Lighting Design Community Podcast, a global platform that empowers, inspires, educates and connects the lighting design community. This podcast is brought to you by our premium supporters Aero Hospitality Lighting, creative Lighting Asia, erco, the Signify Lighting Academy and Philix Lighting. Today, we present an exclusive interview conducted by Katia Kolovea, co-founder of the virtual lighting design community, with Ruskin Hartley, the CEO of Dark Sky International. The interview took place at the Light Middle East 2024 event in Dubai earlier this year.

Our special guest has over 20 years of experience working in conservation and is now leading Dark Sky International, which is at the forefront of the mission to preserve the night globally by addressing light pollution. During the conversation, ruskin highlighted the far-reaching impacts of artificial light as a form of pollution, likening it to air and water pollution. He also explored how light pollution affects human health, the natural behaviors of wildlife and their habitats, shedding light on the critical importance of protecting our dark night skies. There's an evolving movement to protect the night from light pollution, with Ruskin drawing attention to how individuals and organizations can contribute to these efforts. Let's now go to the conversation and hear from Katia Kolovea and Ruskin Harley. Enjoy.

Hello everyone. I'm Katia Kolovea for from the Virtualized Zen community, and we are here for another series of interviews at the Light Middle East Show in Dubai. I'm delighted to have with me here Raskin Hartley from Dark Sky International. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here with us. It's wonderful to be here. We have lots of things to talk about, but before we do that, I would like to ask you to introduce yourself to our audience.

For Ruskin Hartley. For the last five years, I've been running Dark Sky International, formerly the International Dark Sky Association, a non-profit organization based in Tucson, arizona, with advocates and volunteers around the world.

Fantastic. So lots of questions, but I will start from your role here in the show. You are a speaker you talked about in the panel of the dark sky and raising awareness about the importance of dark skies, and it was a very interesting panel. I was there and I was able to listen to the different presentations from different viewpoints. But I would like you to share first your insights and what you felt during this panel like being surrounded by lighting designers who are actually using light, and so I would like to start with that point to introduce what Dark Sky International is advocating and talking about.

Well, one of the great things about being in this show we're surrounded by hundreds of lighting vendors selling good, bad and indifferent products, and lighting designers coming from all over the region and all over the world, and it was really clear actually from the opening discussions that preceded our panel discussion that dark sky and the impact of light pollution is now part of the dialogue amongst the lighting design community. It's not on every project, it's probably not in the minds of every designer, but the fact that we're here the start of 2024, that it's part of the discussion in a major show like this shows that we have made considerable progress. Yeah, in a major show like this shows that we have made considerable progress.

Notwithstanding, we have a long way to go. Definitely, definitely, because you shared some insights and I think it will be really great to be mentioned here as well. You shared about some statistics that how quickly the light pollution is evolving, so could you please repeat that, so to quote you correctly and not try to make it up.

Well, we have known for a long period of time that light pollution is growing and we knew from satellite imagery and we thought Best estimate is growing maybe two or three percent per year. There was a study that came out in science actually almost a year ago to the day, based upon some crowdsource data where they had people around the world have been going out and really literally counting stars and using the number of stars they could count in a constellation like Orion or one of those, looking at those trends over time and it can be used as a proxy for what's happening to the brightening of the night sky. And what they found and what they published one year ago today is that over the last 12 years, over a 12-year period, light pollution and the brightening of the night sky had been changing every year by 10% per year.

Every year 10%.

So, to put it in context, over an eight-year period the night sky brightness had doubled. My son I've mentioned my son is turning 17 this year you mentioned your son. And essentially it means the sky that he was born under. If you go back to the same location today, you will see half as many stars in the sky today, which is a tremendous change, notwithstanding all the other changes going on in the world today.

Yeah, this actually really ties very well with what I want to talk about now here, which is like, maybe first we start, because maybe some people don't know what Dark Sky International is doing. So you mentioned that it's a non-profit organization, but I would like you to also touch the fact that you have volunteers in different parts of the world talking and raising awareness about darkness. So tell us a little bit about that.

so to make the transition of where I want to take it, and I think the history of our organization is also emblematic of the issue, how this issue has evolved and our understanding of this issue has evolved. It was founded in Arizona back in I think it was 1987, 1988, by two astronomers, a professional astronomer and amateur astronomer, coming together and discussing what was going on in the city of Tucson and how the growth of the city and the growth of, let's face it bad lighting in the city was impacting both the professional astronomers and also the amateur astronomers. And they aligned around the solution that the solution wasn't to ask people to turn off all the lights. Their solution was to ask people to use light correctly, to shield it, to point it down, to dim it down, and really that philosophy and that approach is kept with us today. The evolution over the last 30 plus years has really been an evolution of an organized 30 plus years.

Since 88. So what are we coming up to?

40 years, Wow fantastic.

I mean, the evolution has really been an organization that was primarily run by and focused on astronomy and our ability to see the stars, which is incredible and awe-inspiring To one. Today, that is much more talking about all of the other impacts, like pollution, the impact it's having on our ecosystems, on our wildlife, the impact it's having on human health.

It's the embodiment of waste. You can save the planet. You can combat climate change and help save the planet by using less energy. You can also use it. Turning down a light has a long-term impact of losing, yet using less energy it has an immediate impact of removing that source of pollutant from the sky.

Absolutely. And also yesterday you used this very good reference of People outside of the industry, the general public, as I really like using this terminology anyway they don't really consider, they don't really understand how, indeed, when the light is pointing up or doing all the things that it shouldn't, it's polluting the sky and, of course, it's our responsibility as professionals to talk about it and try to educate it and raise awareness. But you use this image because people think that more light means more safe, more safe environment, which is not true, and you use this reference of how light is actually blinding you.

Yeah, I mean, I think most people, if they've watched the old movies, know when you go into the be interviewed by the police officers, the first thing they do is they take the light and they shine it in your eyes so that you really can't see anything else. And really that's what we're doing in so many places around our cities and homes, and the image that we share and it's an image that really, I think, has people sit up and take notice and begin to understand it is. It's a simple image of a residential home, single family home in the US, with a bright porch light lighting the side path and there's a gate in the distance. And then one image on the left, the sort of before you can see the bright glare and you can see the gate and not much else.

And then the person taking the photo takes, very simply, just putting the light to shield the glare from the light and suddenly you can see that what pops out there's someone coming towards you and I think that on a visceral level just helps people break down this message that actually more light doesn't make us safe. What makes us safer is actually a better use of light, Of light and using light with care and restraint to create those contrasts that enables us to see.

This really links very, very nicely to the next thing that I would like to ask you, which is how do you, as you're asking, serving with your family, members, friends or, like you say, I'm running this organization? This is what I do Like. How do you communicate to them why they should care about light pollution? Because the sky to see the sky. I have done many conversations with people like well, I never saw the sky, the dark sky, so I don't really understand what I'm missing because I haven't seen it and I'm trying to find ways.

That's why I'm asking how do you use Well, I think for many people I'll speak generally and then I'll speak specifically about my family. I think generally for people, everyone has a different life history and different experience and there are different things that they care about. Some people care about migrating birds. Some people maybe they live on the beach and maybe they're fortunate to live on the Gulf Coast and there's turtles there. Maybe there's people who are enamored by space and they want to see it. So there's so many points of connection, or just the basics, that someone cares about the future of the planet or they care about creating welcoming spaces for their community so they can go outside and enjoy each other's company after night. But those are all points of connection to discuss quality lighting and light pollution. Now the specifics of my family.

I grew up in a family we grew up outdoors whenever we can, when it wasn't raining in the UK, and my parents are design professionals. They're architects and urban planners and it's been interesting, since I've joined Dark Sky and started to learn about this, how I've been able to bring that knowledge to them and that awareness. And they're like you know what? We've been designing buildings for the last 30 or 40 years, thinking about large-scale cities, and we've never trained on this, we didn't get the training. So their advocacy to me is you need to make this stuff simple and accessible to, yes, the design community, but the broader community at large. It's nice for me. My parents, coincidentally, live up in northwest Britain in what in the last few years actually became a dark sky reserve oh wow, the Orchardales Dark Sky Reserve. So now they feel this added responsibility.

To preserve that.

To preserve it and do it responsibly, and then talk to their neighbors and their community and communicate exactly.

It's like a chain how we can work together I love that precious shared resource and that was my next question actually, because you said that you are living in arizona and there is where the organization started and my question was like have you experienced the dark sky? Yeah, I was fortunate.

Actually my first week moving to Arizona to take this job, I was taken out to Kitt Peak. It's a mountain about an hour outside Tucson, a little bit less, and it's where the US National Observatory is, the National Optical Observatory.

I've never been, so it's on my bucket list.

It's a world-class observatory and it's there for a reason. It's there because the southwest is very dry, the skies are very dark and it was actually the presence of that observatory that has encouraged Tucson to use restraint in its lighting over time. But I remember going out there that first week. We went out before sunset and we watched out before sunset and we watched the sunset and we watched the stars starting to come out. And again, I'm not an astronomer. I know basic constellations and at some point, as it's getting dark, and say oh, I know that constellation, I know this, I can identify.

I can identify like a lion's coming out.

But then, as the evening wore on and as the sun dropped further below the horizon, more and more and more stars came, and, in fact, the end. There's so many stars that have come out that you've lost the familiarity of those constellations. But to be out under that star with the Milky Way and the stars overhead.

People describe this sense of awe, and it's true. I mean it makes you feel small, it makes you feel humble, it makes you realize our. It makes you feel humble, it makes you realize that our relationship to the universe and for many people, myself included is something that sort of stays with you for the rest of your life.

You say that and I really go back to 2013. I think that's the one and only time in my life so far that I experienced exactly this feeling and I was in a Greek island, in Anafi, in in Greece, where we went, we hike in a in a church and we stayed there overnight. We slept there and I had this feeling that I don't want to fall asleep, like I was looking up and I was feeling that the, the stars are coming to. I don't know to take me with that. I don't know to take me with it. I don't know Like. It was an incredible emotion and I'm like, oh my God, like if you have experienced it once, you can really understand why we are fighting for, and we are really amongst the first generation to really lose that connection.

I mean, even 50, 60 years ago you talked to people you know who had the opportunity to you know grow up outside the suburbs in Chicago or maybe London or maybe Athens. At that time, yes, the population was smaller, our cities were smaller and there was less light in them. People even close to urban areas would have that experience. Leave aside people growing up 100 years ago, when really before the widespread use of modern light.

Really, that connection and direct experience of the cosmos is really part of what makes us human. It's something that we've lost.

Wow, that's very strong and I think it's a very good thing to really continue talking, raising awareness. I would ask you about virtualizing community and how much you know us, but the Dark Sky International is already a partner and we are trying to create links and share what you guys are doing and raise awareness to our community. So would you like to share a few words on that?

I think the engagement of Dark Sky with the lighting design community and other communities is absolutely critical. To continue this work. I think the sad reality is most projects involving lighting with the lighting design community and other communities is absolutely critical to continue this work. I think the sad reality is most projects involving lighting do not involve a lighting designer. You mentioned that. I mean someone told me this is not chapter and verse but maybe 4% or 5% of projects involving a light involve a lighting designer. The vast majority of projects are a distributor or a builder or a homeowner going down to the store buying a wall pack or something because they feel like they need light there.

And so I think it has come upon us to come together and every opportunity we can to sort of educate people about the difference between good and bad lighting. And again, this is not about denying ourselves access to light, this is about denying ourselves access to bad light. And unfortunately most people haven't ever had that pointed out to them. When someone points out a bad light to you, you will see them everywhere you go.

You know I wasn't really planning to bring this up, but I'm going to mention it. We had like a brief discussion, but maybe for the audience that I started exactly for that reason, the lighting police movement, which is an international platform to raise awareness about that by using bad examples and good examples and do like. I get messages from people from my community that they're like Katia, you have destroyed my life. Because now, wherever I go, I look for the bad lights and if I feel uncomfortable, I might even leave the restaurant and go somewhere else and I'm like yes, that's the purpose to make sure that all of the people around us, little by little, understanding what you're talking about and then look for the right light.

Yeah, and I think, the opportunity to collaborate, to take people in your family, take people in your neighborhood, take people in the community. Just walk around town.

Walk around town, yeah.

Who gets to do that anymore?

Walk around that town and just observe, observe. That's the magic word.

And you don't even have to tell them. Just observe what you're seeing. Basically, your eye will be drawn to the glare of the bad lights, and then you can talk to them about what that's doing to them on a level in terms of reducing visibility, and then use that as a segue to talk about what that's doing to the broader planet.

I think that's a perfect way to really sum it up on this stage. Obviously, we're going to be sharing more and more content of what you guys are doing Right now. I see from lots of your volunteers around the world that I could think about Kerem Asfarulu from like now. I think he's in Ireland.

He's in Ireland, from Ireland, doing projects completely like following the structured way to really see before and after, and I would love this to be more like using the VirtualEyes and community platform to create links with all those different volunteers and people that you have around the world to continue all together raising awareness and do things collectively. We look forward to that, thank you. Thank you very much for being part of the platform and being here with us.

It was a pleasure honored to be with you thank you so much, everyone, for watching.

it was great a A great experience. Actually, that was my last interview for this series, so I'm honored to have this chance and I'm looking forward for the future collaborations with you.

Well, thanks for the time, thank you.

Thank you, everyone, thank you.

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