Another summer is ebbing away and the skies are beginning to cloud over - a precursor of the rains to come. One stands outside in the not-so-great outdoors (thanks to the sprawl of “development”) to look up to the night sky only to see that it retains a distinctly pale navy-like colour. Such is the extent to which the artificial lighting pollutes the skies at night.

It is not easy to see why the Islands have been allowed to deteriorate to such a degree. I speak to my elders and find them reminiscing over the days when one could look from atop a hill and see hardly a single light anywhere - and that just some 40 years earlier!

It is saddening to dwell upon it - even though the almost endless expanse of human lighting does have its own potential for charm, were it not so chaotically splattered over the horizons like some abstract artwork gone wrong.

And it is all so wasteful! Satellite imagery of the islands by night offer a rather faithful picture in spite of the fact that only the lit areas turn up. You may see it for yourself!

No… the reckless abandonment of the Islands to the greed of developers requires an immediate remedy, as do the priorities of government planners require refinement.
If we cannot do it for ourselves then we should at least do it for the children.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 5:07 pm and is filed under The Maltese context. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.