City lights, highway lights, and human wastefulness have conquered the stars. Photic pollution (light pollution) has overthrown the majesty of Heaven in all heavily populated areas of the industrial world and seriously diminished it elsewhere. Since their work is affected, astronomers have been at the vanguard of a movement to do something about the situation. But many people don't even know what a naked-eye star looks like, let alone a full celestial vault. There are organizations that advocate better lighting policies, for instance the International Dark-Sky Association, which every astrologer and astrological organization ought to support.
For it's not just an astronomers' problem. It is both a psychological and a cultural problem. Psychological. Anyone who has seen a clean night sky has encountered the paradox of the divine in a direct, physical way. The sky is both Pascal's infinite space with its frightening eternal silence, and something closer, almost domestic. Omar Khayyam's bowl. It is a paradox we need in order to keep sane. Cultural. One could mention all the literary imagery connected to the stars, imagery that has become as useless as the horse for most; but one need only think of the astrologers for whom the sky is reduced to an ephemeris or a computer screen.
The best light-pollution site I have seen was put up by the classicist John McMahon. It has a good number of links, mostly to various anti-light-pollution websites. One of them is to a collection of quotes put together by lightfromabove.org. Among these is the following, from Havelock Ellis of all people: "The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago...had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." (The Dance of Life, 1923.) Well, it's happening.
