Light pollution affects many things and one of those things is the economy itself. This subject is a little delicate to talk about since although as a nation a healthy economy is important, the average person wouldn’t care as much as they should. It’s important to keep the economy healthy for three reasons, self gain, country gain, and world gain. A superpower’s economy not only affects its civilians but the world around them so it’s our responsibility to lift some weight off the economy since at the end of the day it’s a win win for everyone.
Although you may believe that the economy may not have such a great impact on your life you have to remember how bad it was during the great depression. The article, Everyday life in the Great Depression states that, “By 1932, three years after the initial crash, nearly thirty million Americans had lost their source of income, from unemployment or loss of a family breadwinner.” Although light pollution itself may not bring an entire nation down, it really places a strain on its economy and as time passes that strain could easily become an issue. As citizens of a country it’s our duty to be able to give back to our community and help out. It becomes harder to acquire normal everyday items like food and clothing when resources start dimming. As an individual, you may not be losing too much money from light polluting but as an entire country the story is entirely different.
A nation has the responsibility to give its inhabitants access to electricity however they can produce it. We who use that electricity have the right to use it however we want without obstructing others and that means we can just waste it if we please. The article named, Light Pollution Costs Money, Wastes Energy and Resources states that, “The International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Arizona, an environmental group, estimates that one-third of all lighting in the U.S. is wasted, at an annual cost of about 30 million barrels of oil and 8.2 million tons of coal-a total of about U.S. $2 billion.” Two billions dollars is just outrageous and we could be using that money for so many other things but we instead insist it’s fine to waste it. Not only is it an economic waste it’s also very damaging to the environment as we need to gather those resources somehow and that requires us to destroy the earth to receive those resources. A country does lose a lot of money from something they could easily stop but light pollution doesn’t just affect one country, it affects everywhere where light is misused.
A common effect that the world shares is that resources are even more rapidly wasted. With these rapid decreases of resources that is exponentially growing the world will only get worse. An example would be World War 2. Germany was in great poverty and the only way they thought they could get out of it would be if they seized resources by force. This led to a whole world war which killed millions of people. As resources dwindle a spark of violence could trigger violence between nations. Another world war is the last thing anyone wants. This is all speculation though, if it’s possible to convert into pure renewable resources only then this could easily be avoided but for now these limited resources are only becoming more precious. Although renewable resources could fix the issue with the money lost from wasted light, light pollution does more than just affect the economy.
It seems that the effects of light pollution goes under the radar of the public's’ mind but it does exist and it does cause harm. Money is important to many people whether they want to admit it or not, it’s important that we don’t waste it so that our future generations can live better lives than us. We don’t want to give them a world in which they have to solve the problems that we created.