In the Garden: Light pollution of the night sky above the
Eastern U.S. is visible from space. (Photo courtesty of NOAA and
the U.S. Air Force) Let There Be Light, But Not Too Much As we
were watching fireflies the other evening I couldn't help but
wonder how much brighter they'd be, and how many more we'd see,
if it weren't for the nearby streetlight. Fireflies are one of
those gifts of nature, like the impossibly bright plumage of
cardinals and bluebirds or the incredible intricacy of a
passionflower -- things that make one pause to wonder if maybe
there is a guiding hand behind the evolutionary process. In the
brightly lit world we live in, it would be easy to overlook the
humble firefly, but to do so is to miss a miracle of nature. Air
and water pollution make the headlines, but there's another kind
of pollution that has an impact on us, and on the animals and
plants around us: light pollution. Most of us live in cities or
suburbs and have never experienced the blackness of a moonless
night. When I moved f