ABSTRACT
The night sky is a superlatively wondrous and deeply threatened natural asset. Its importance is vast and its role in nature and culture is multifaceted and sweeping. Its legacy is inscribed in the very DNA of Earth’s fl ora and fauna, as well as etched into the languages of its people. Words like heavenly, stellar and cosmic attest to its beauty and wonder. As an asset, the night sky is extraordinary in many ways beyond its obvious beauty and grandeur. It is neither renewable nor depletable. Rather it is a fl ux, or a fl ow, whose benefi ts cannot be accelerated or depleted. However, this fl ow can be obscured, or wisely used to benefi t humanity and the wide array of wildlife that needs dark nights. The night sky is a scenic asset, not constrained to a single locale, but heretofore generally accessible to people all around the world. It is a cultural asset that shaped the hallmarks of civilisation including art, literature, math, science, religion, language, poetry and concepts of time. It has been a source of beauty, inspiration and recreation for millennia, yet in recent decades humanity has been isolating itself from its oldest companion. It is as if, on this planet of seven billion people, humanity has decided it has too much beauty, too much wonder and too many resources; it no longer needs the ongoing fl ows of this unparalleled, infi nite resource.
