In The New Atlantis, Jacob Hoerger writes of light pollution and what it’s doing to our views of the stars.

Growing up in the suburbs, I could always see the stars okay but not great. In the city, you can’t really see them at all. It wasn’t until I moved to Deseret that I was able to look up and see all the stars. It was an amazing, almost spiritual experience.

What strikes me reading the article, as well as people astronomer types talk about it, is how avoidable a lot of the light pollution is. My initial read on the controversy was… not favorable to the complainants. But the more I read, the more I understood where they were coming from. A lot of it is just sloppiness.