I spent the month of July sailing from Southern Greece to Northern Spain - a 2000 nautical mile voyage in a 14-meter yacht.

It was the first time I’d been out of sight of land since the start of the COVID pandemic.

As we headed across the Ionian Sea to Siracusa, I saw a red sun disappear beneath the horizon with the briefest wink of green light. The so-called ‘green flash’ - so rarely seen that some doubt its reality!

On watch that night I was treated to the sublime spectacle of a truly dark night sky, unpolluted by artificial light - stretching from horizon to horizon.

The arch of the Milky Way glowed above us and the occasional meteor briefly slid across the sky. Jupiter and Saturn rose slowly in the east, Antares glowed low in the south, Arcturus descended towards the western horizon, and Cassiopeia looked down on us from her throne in the northern sky.

A mysterious rain fell from that cloudless sky - a rain of wonder and peace - and I felt a strange, spine-tingling joy.

Among all the many precious things threatened by our reckless and greedy commitment to what economists and politicians call ‘growth’, is the darkess of the night.

Most of us now live in towns and cities where artifical light veils all but the brightest stars. And the plague is spreading ever wider. The night we see is quite different from that with which all our ancestors were familiar. Different, and profoundly impoverished.

Yet unlike many of the environmental problems we face, light pollution is relatively easy to fix.

It’s not difficult to turn off the many lights that serve no useful purpose, and it’s easy to shield those that we really need so that their light isn’t wastefully poured into the sky.

Light pollution is a serious threat to the welfare of many of the creatures with which we share the planet - from migratory birds and insects, to amphibians, crustaceans, reptiles and even plants. And there’s a strong body of evidence that it’s bad for our health too.

Of course reducing light pollution would also save a great deal of money as well as reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

The UK Parliament is currently considering a new Environment Bill which contains a number of key targets. Bafflingly, however, reducing light pollution is not yet among them.

The UK charity Buglife has been working hard, in collaboration with others, to change that, but they need all the help they can get.

If, like me, you want to see light pollution reduced, why not lend Buglife your support? You can do so by joining as a member or by writing to your MP (if you live in the UK) to support their proposed amendment to the Envirnoment Bill.

You might also be interested in supporting the impressive work of the excellent US-based International Dark Sky Association.