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Lesson 12 Light Pollution
Class
Name
(1) If humans were truly at home under the light of the moon and stars, we would live in
くつろぐ
darkness happily. The midnight world would be as visible to us as it is to the vast number of
No.
nocturnal species on this planet. Instead, we are diurnal creatures, with eyes adapted to living in
the sun's light. This is a basic evolutionary fact, even though most of us don't think of ourselves
as diurnal beings any more than we think of ourselves as mammals. Yet it's the only way to
explain what we've done to the night; we've engineered it by filling it with light so that we can
へように
be active at night.
(2) This kind of engineering is similar to damming a river. Its benefits come with consequences
に伴って起こる
結果
- called light pollution - the effects of which scientists are only now beginning to study. Light
pollution is largely the result of bad lighting design, which allows artificial light to shine outward
人工的な
and upward into the sky instead of focusing it downward. Badly designed lighting washes out the
darkness of night and greatly alters the light levels and light rhythms, to which many forms of
life, including humans, have adapted Wherever human light shines out into the natural world,
some aspect of life, whether it is migration, breeding or feeding, is affected.
whether A or B· A=·AD3B78332
(3) For most of human history, the phrase "light pollution" would have made no sense. Imagine
walking toward London on a moonlit night around 1800, when it was Earth's largest city. Nearly
ほとんど
a million people lived there with candles, torches, and lanterns. Only a few houses were lit by
gas, and there would be no public gaslights in the streets or squares for another seven years. From
広島 (前) さらに
a few miles away, you would have been as likely to smell London as to see its faint collective
glow.
集まっている様子
(4) Now most humans live under domes of reflected light: of scattering rays from cities and
suburbs with too much lighting, and from light-flooded highways and factories. Nearly all of
nighttime Europe is a nebula of light, as is most of the United States and all of Japan. In the south
Atlantic the glow from a single group of fishing boats squid fishermen attracting prey with
大西
high brightness lamps can be seen from space, burning brighter, in fact, than Buenos Aires or
Rio de Janeiro.
(5) We've lit up the night, forgetting that it is occupied by many different living species. The
number of nocturnal mammal species alone is astonishing. Light is a powerful biological force,
