by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
Few images evoke more emotional symbolism than light. As far back as history records, light held a significant place in ancient cultures, many of which worshipped the sun. In the Christian faith, the “light of the world” symbolizes truth, divinity, knowledge, even life itself. That is the symbolic origin of Christmas lights on our houses.
We just took down our Christmas lights for the year, but if we lived in Maine we might never put them up again. Our neighborhood is seasonally lit up like one of those quaint little toy villages, but if we lived in Maine, we would be demonized for such “non-essential” lighting. An outright ban is coming soon, as Maine is now home to more Scrooges and Grinches than Dickens or Seuss could have imagined.
Maine just adopted the nation’s strictest anti-lighting law. Advocates promoted it as an effort to recapture what was once great about the night skies — something forever lost to the great evil of cities and their light pollution. These activists may not know it, living almost exclusively in the exclusive neighborhoods of large cities, but the night skies are still spectacular in most of the world, including Maine.
Stargazing is more popular than ever before, and telescope sales are growing because of rising public interest in astronomy, technological improvements, the rebirth of NASA, and even astro-tourism. Telescope sales are a $370 million industry in the U.S. alone and growing 8% annually. Worldwide, 1.8 million telescopes were sold in 2023, so the idea that darkness is disappearing is simply uninformed.
