CELPIP Listening Part 6 Practice Test: Lights Out for the Night Sky?

NARRATOR: Step outside in most Canadian cities on a clear night and you'll be lucky to count a dozen stars. The culprit is artificial light: streetlights, parking lots, glowing billboards and office towers that stay illuminated long after the last employee has gone home. A small but growing movement argues that municipalities should restrict outdoor lighting after dark, and the idea is getting a surprisingly sympathetic hearing. Supporters call it overdue; critics call it naive.

NARRATOR: Rebecca Lindqvist, a biologist who studies songbirds, is among its most persistent advocates. Every spring and fall, she explains, millions of birds migrate at night, steering by the stars, and brightly lit buildings pull them off course, sometimes fatally. Insects, frogs and even trees, whose seasonal rhythms depend on darkness, suffer as well. Yet Lindqvist is careful not to demand total darkness. What she proposes is fairly modest: shielded fixtures that point light downward, warmer bulbs, and switching off decorative lighting after midnight. Towns that have tried these measures, she notes, have also trimmed their electricity bills considerably, which tends to win over even taxpayers who care little about birds.

NARRATOR: Not everyone is persuaded. Marcus Doyle, who manages security for a chain of downtown parking garages, worries that dimmer streets will feel less safe, particularly for shift workers walking home at two in the morning. In his experience, he says, a well-lit entrance discourages theft more reliably than any camera. Doyle also bristles at the notion that city hall should dictate how private businesses light their property. Still, he has no quarrel with turning off empty office towers, which he calls a waste nobody can defend.

NARRATOR: Lindqvist's reply is that brighter does not necessarily mean safer. Glare from poorly aimed lights, she argues, creates deep shadows and can actually make it harder to notice someone approaching. Well-designed lighting, by contrast, puts the light where people walk, rather than into the sky and into bedroom windows.

NARRATOR: Doyle's concerns about safety deserve a fair hearing, and any restrictions would need to be introduced gradually, with input from those who work at night. But the evidence suggests that a great deal of urban lighting serves no one at all. Cities could begin with the easy changes, the empty towers and the unshielded fixtures, and judge the results before going further. The stars, after all, have been waiting a long time.