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Light Pollution - Blog Posts
Turn Out the Lights
dcxdp fic idea
Danny Fenton is an environmentalist. Not because of Sam or Undergrowth or anything like that.
but because light pollution and smog block out the stars.
and he misses the stars.
When he was a kid he remembers looking up at the sky and being able to see the Milky Way with his naked eye from his own rooftop. By the time he left Amity he had to drive an hour outside the city limits to see even half that with all the sky glow.
And it was only getting worse. News was that even from the ISS Earth's light pollution problem was starting to interfere with their work. In 20 years would there even be a night sky anymore? When he died for real would his body be able to be laid out under them like he always imagined?
However bad Amity had been when he left, Metropolis was worse. While there wasn't the smog problem that their sister city Gotham had-all the street lights still had the place looking like noon in the Sahara around the clock.
So he studied. Got his Master's in areospace engeneering and then his PhD in environmental sciences. It was the hardest thing he had ever done and he defeated an evil tyrant before finishing puberty.
And now he was pounding on doors and camping out on sidewalks to tell people about the problem and get signatures to try and get a city ordinance passed. He was at every town hall, every HOA meeting. He sent letters and emails and made phone calls. He raised money for billboards and applied to grants for lower lumen lightbulbs.
(He may or may not then use his powers to replace burnt out bulbs around the city and install shielding on street lamps as he could)
It was on one of these escapades that he first ran into Superman. Who thought he was a super villiain or something. Danny shoved a flyer at him saying "he was just trying to help" before vanishing.
Later, one Clark Kent would be seen stopping to talk to a young environmentalist handing out flyers and asking for signatures on the sidewalk.
If asked the young man would claim he assumed the city was finally doing something about the lights.
Clark began to do his own research and what he found went far beyond no longer being able to see the stars from Earth (which he admit hurt, time was he could even see his old solar system). but the physical and pychological damage these artifical lights were doing was awful. Increased breast cancer risk? worsening bipolar and depression symptoms? diabetes? parkinsons? and that was just the effect on humans! the effects on wildlife were just as bad, if not worse.
And he thought lead pipes were bad.
It wasn't a front page story. Not yet at any rate. But there was a story here. And he felt obligated to be the one to share it. For that little boy back on the farm taking comfort in the night sky when he felt alone and missed his people. And for that guy with desperation in his eyes passing out flyers and begging for someone to listen like his life depended on it.
In the event of a mass power cut, how long would it take for the stars to become visible?
Would it be instantaneous? Would all the lights go out and you look up and there's the milky way? Or would it be slow? Would the sky stay dark as the light pollution caught in the clouds slowly bleeds away to reveal the stars?
(how fast would they disappear? To look up at the vastness of the heavens and the fullness of the universe and with final flick of a switch they disappear and you're surrounded by the artificial glow of streetlights.)
