Many of the other planetary changes we have wrought have natural counterparts: Modern climate change is unquestionably the result of human influence, but the planet’s climate does change naturally over much slower timescales. Light at night, however, is a uniquely anthropogenic force. The daily and seasonal rhythms of bright and dark remained inviolate throughout all of evolutionary time—a 4-billion-year streak that began to falter in the nineteenth century. Astronomers and physicists were among the first to talk about light pollution, which dimmed their view of the stars. Biologists only
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