8 ways to reduce light pollution

3. Turn the lights off at work
Collisions with man-made structures are the number one cause of death among migrating birds -- many of which are already facing extinction from habitat loss. Ask your office building's management to turn off the lights during bird migration season in the spring and fall. Visit the website of the Fatal Lights Awareness Program, a Toronto organization that has successfully lobbied to get Toronto's financial core darkened during migration season, for info on its Bird-Friendly Building campaign. If you're working late and the light switch controls only the entire floor, close everyone's blinds or doors -- or, if you don't mind, just use a simple desk lamp. Or work from home. (Or, best option yet, call it a night and be tomorrow's early bird instead.)

4. Boycott clutterbugs
"Lighting clutter" refers to the excessive grouping of lighting, especially illuminated billboards and overly lit-up commercial establishments. You can tell companies why you don't agree with what they're doing (detracting from highway safety, in many locations, cluttering the landscape, and wasting energy -- in all cases), and inform them you're patronizing more eco-friendly competitors until they wise up. Will they care? If you get your friends, family and local environmental organizations involved in the letter-writing campaign, they will. And if all of you start writing to local newspapers and raising awareness of the issue, doubly so.

5. Harness your spending power -- stay at hotels that conserve energy
Eco-tourism is a booming industry. Stay at hotels, inns and resorts that tread lightly on the earth through energy-conservation measures that enforce strict lights-out or light-blocking measures in bird-migration paths, sea turtle-nesting areas, and other particularly light-sensitive wildlife areas.

6. Get involved in municipal politics
Write, e-mail or phone your local councillor, as well as the mayor's office, to talk about city lighting. Suggest ways to reduce lighting consumption in municipal buildings (cooling it with the dramatic -- yet wasteful -- uplighting on building facades and off roofs is one easy way). And lobby for high-efficiency, lower-energy, flat-lens streetlight fixtures. Not only do they produce less greenhouse gases, they reduce glare, increasing driver, cyclist and pedestrian safety. Is your city likely to overhaul its lights overnight? No, but keep plugging away. Eventually, every street-lighting system needs upgrading, and cash-strapped municipalities will look for cost-saving and eco-friendly options. Ask your municipal politicians to visit the City of Calgary's website for info on the Envirosmart streetlights the city installed a few years ago, which have saved an estimated $2 million a year in energy costs.

7. Lobby for a lights-out
The 20,000 lights on Paris's Eiffel Tower were turned off for five minutes earlier in February 2007, in a symbolic gesture aiming to raise awareness about energy consumption and global warming. Start a letter-writing campaign to get your local landmark to follow suit -- perhaps on Earth Day/Night. Also, ask local sports arenas and stadiums to turn off lights when games aren't playing.

8. Lights out in the wilderness
When camping and cottaging, keep exterior lights off as much as possible as they can interfere with the body clocks of nocturnal creatures like salamanders, giving them fewer hours to scavenge for food. And keep interior light indoors with blackout curtains.

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