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Comment by _moof | Hacker News Reader

> Seldom do we go outside on a clear night, away from the lights of the city, and gaze at the dark starry sky, or take walks in the woods unaccompanied by our digital devices.

I am so, so, so tired of people who live in cities acting like other human beings don't exist.

There's a whole world out there, folks, and it continues to exist even after your vacation is over.

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Sentence prior started “Many of us…” I’d say the “we” is referring to those people.

That's fair. I suppose the source of my irritation isn't just that one sentence; it's more holistic. And it's borne out of experiences living in rural areas that people from nearby cities treat like their own personal playgrounds. I just don't have much patience left for an article bemoaning the lack of "nature" when "nature" is still very much there, and its apparent disappearance is the result of deliberate choices, not some irresistible force.

Anyway, I'm going to put down the screen and go outside and look at the dark starry sky now.

You can spot a tourist a mile a way goes the saying in the big cities.

Your irritation is irrational; the group you are talking about is not coherent and it also exists where you live. I agree with you that there are choices being made that makes nature so much worse. I've always been a cityslicker with relatives on farms, my view of those that move in their circles they are a lot more pro destroy the nature.

If you are just talking about the privileges of nature from living in far out suburbs or country side, then I might be inclined to put you in the same category. I won't because our situation will be so different and it would be irrational to make you an enemy without knowing what your situation actualy is.

If your work depends on big ag you can't do much to resist those market pressures, "it is what it is" as they say. However, I've seen people with money spend extraordinary amounts in restoration of thousands of acres as we can find fit among the arable acres.

"And it's borne out of experiences living in rural areas that people from nearby cities treat like their own personal playgrounds."

That has been my sad experience too. I live in a beautiful place. Lack of services keep most people away, but as more people seek to enjoy nature, it gets trashed. I used to go on walks and things were clean, now I can fill a small bag with trash.

There are some local attractions that the world should see, but the locations are not shared online for fear they will be trashed. Those fears are not unfounded.

As for the dark, starry sky - just last night I looked out my window at a cold, clear night and all the stars. It is our there, but who wants to live in a place with spotty cell service, no trash service, a few small restaurants and abundant cold weather?

Your latter gripe is the subject of the article, surely? Nature is there and not everyone makes the effort get out amongst it. Whether our screens and fears of the dark unknown are irresistible is perhaps debatable.

+1. Come over to Estonia, author. About 50% of our territory is forest, at least statistically. Many complain (rightly so) about too intensive logging, but there is nonetheless plenty of forest left, even if much of it is planted by humans several decades ago. City dwellers are finding their ways back to the countryside, figuring out solutions to live there all year. Farmers are still alive, many of them doing well... etc. There's lots of happy people living outside bigger cities and towns. I doubt this could be much different in most other countries.

If anything, I'd say nature is finding its way back to city and town centers. Or is this an exaggeration, wishful thinking? Let's think about "everyone's nature conservation" and other similar memes. Recreational areas in towns seem to be greener and way better thought out in my country than they were some 20 years ago, etc.

It's a different, more exhausted planet than some decades ago, but current 20+ generation is clearly acting towards preserving and reincarnating nature as much as they can.

Entirely fair comment, especially considering the night sky-less city experience will be a subset of "urban":

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/urban-and-rural-populatio...

I'm not sure I understood your point, especially in relation to what you quote. Could you rephrase that?

The "we" in that statement fails to account for the millions of people who do, in fact, do these things regularly. This failure to imagine that there are vast numbers of people whose lives are different from the author's is something I see frequently, and it's irritating.

I doubt it's a failure to imagine other lives.

I think it's probably deliberately appealing to people who are miserable and feel helpless to change their lives by, say, leaving their city for a rural life.

Not that it's helping them, but it's addressing them.

The reasons why it's impossible to move to a rural area and be done with it are left unstated.

Even urbanites have been known to lose themselves on Hampstead Heath or in Central Park.

This.

And how exactly do you stay "away from the lights of the city"? Last time I checked light pollution didn't really care whether you live in a city or not, having a strong light source within a quite sizable radius was more than enough to significantly limit what you can see in the sky. There's not a lot of places where humans live and which aren't polluted at night.

Go 50 miles away from your nearest city and look at the sky. There’s a ton of places people live that aren’t light polluted to a level acceptable for amateur astronomy.

There are many places in the world where this is not a thing. I live in a densely populated country where it it simply not possible to get that far away from any city. If you drive 50km in any direction anywhere in the country, you would've encountered quite a few cities. I would have to cross several borders to get to a place without light pollution.

Netherlands? Germany (1 border) or France (2 borders) are fine. NL (I am from there but moved away a long time ago for this and other reasons) is more of an exception than a rule I would say.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

It's about 180 km (110 miles) to merely get into a light blue spot for me, and it's actually a quite short distance compared to country's average.

If the "nearest city" includes the edge of the suburbs, then perhaps. But there's a whole lot of sprawl in the US that has smeared the population across the landscape, with corresponding strip malls that have blazing lights 24/7.

There are a lot of hot spots on this map:

* https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

For the US, one-third of the population lives in coastal counties:

* https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/07/millions-of-a...

Two-thirds of the US population lives within 100mi (160km) of the border:

* https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

I think the pictures that show the entire eastern seaboard as lit up may be misleading if one assumes they represent ground-level experience.

While I haven't been engaged in amateur astronomy for a long time, I vaguely remember an event/meeting years ago that was not that far out in the country, and just a few miles/minutes travel away from the "strip malls" made a huge difference. Northern lights were visible and I think the Milky Way.

I have been out west where it is really dark, so whether or not my recollection is accurate, I do know what undisputedly dark skies are like.

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