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Artificial light at night

Humanity lighting up the night at planetary scale, and the closest natural experiment we have to a self-illuminated world. The ecological consequences are reasonably well documented: streetlights draw flying insects from hundreds of metres around and hold them circling until they die of exhaustion; night pollinators such as moths and bats avoid lit ground, reducing fruit set in night-pollinated plants; daytime predators extend their hunting into the dark, raising pressure on prey that only ever worked at night; hatchling sea turtles orient toward the brightest horizon and coastal lighting draws them inland instead. The general lesson is that darkness is itself a resource, and erasing it breaks schedules that took millions of years to settle.