The night sky with is stunning display of celestial beauty and phenomena have served as a source of inspiration for humanity over the ages as is recognized in the name of these workshops. However, in recent decades, the night sky has been lost to an increasing fraction of humanity, blanketed by an increasing fog of wasted artificial light scattered into the sky - light pollution.
In this paper, I will trace the history of light pollution and astronomy. I will address the problem of light pollution and show how widespread it is currently and how rapidly it is growing.
Not only is the inspiration of the night sky being lost, but light pollution wastes billions of dollars of energy, contributes to the threat of global warming through unneeded greenhouse gas emissions and contributes to unsafe conditions through poor lighting practices.
However, there is an increasing awareness of the problems associated with light pollution. Numerous cities, states and governments are adopting outdoor lighting ordinances designed to curb the wasting of outdoor nightime lighting. Environmentalists are including light pollution on the agenda of issues being tackled as are agencies such as the National Park Service in the U.S. The International Astronomical Union is actively promting the preservation of dark skies as is the United Nations. In the Vienna Declaration of 1999 (UNISPACE III) , the U.N. came out supporting preservation or restoring the astronomical sky to as close to its natural state as possible. I will summarize the present activities for preserving the night sky and speculate on how successful they might be in restoring the night sky in the future.