Saturday (tomorrow), May 14, 2022, is World Migratory Bird Day 2022. The environmental group behind the campaign states:
Light pollution can adversely affect migratory birds on:
🔴 Behavior
🔴 Activity levels
🔴 Energy expenditure
🔴 Orientation when flying at night
🔴 Migration timing & routes
The theme this year is Dim the Lights:
…Artificial light is increasing globally by at least 2 per cent per year and it is known to adversely affect many bird species. Light pollution is a significant threat to migratory birds, causing disorientation when they fly at night, leading to collisions with buildings, perturbing their internal clocks, or interfering with their ability to undertake long-distance migrations.
Solutions to light pollution are readily available. For instance, more and more cities in the world are taking measures to dim building lights during migration phases in spring and autumn.
“Maybe instead of investigating the relatively high price [in early 2002] of gasoline, the government should check into its own regulatory and tax policies that artificially reduce supply and raise prices.”
This piece was written in first-quarter 2002 when environmental requirements were pushing reformulated gasoline prices higher, and the wellhead oil boom associated with hydraulic fractionation and horizontal drilling was a decade away.
Today, the war against oil from the Net Zero movement–now joined by the Russia/Ukraine conflict–has sent prices to historically high levels. Still, a mostly free market has wondrously overcome impediments to make a “depletable” mineral plentiful and affordable for hundreds of millions of Americans each day.
Let’s go back to the debate 20 years ago, when gasoline was sold for $1.50 per gallon (about $2.50 today)….
Crude oil prices are at a 6-month high. …
“A band of desperate terrorists has taken over the PSC building and is holding the entire staff and all the commissioners as hostages. The dastardly fiends are threatening to release one regulator every hour until their demands are met.”
Jim Clarkson (above) has a sense of humor (also see his “The Ratepayer’s Prayer). Remaining light-hearted is necessary when regulation-protected utilities take advantage of ratepayers every kilowatt hour of every day. For Clarkson is a a friend of free markets and thus ratepayers. [1]
Clarkson, founder and president of Resource Supply Management, publishes a monthly Georgia Regulatory Update. Clarkson’s fare mixes the inevitable bad news of current events with short explanations why markets protect ratepayers better than bureaucrats and politicians.
A major ongoing saga involves Georgia Power Company (Southern Company) and Vogtle Nuclear Plants #3 and #4, which is still in construction.…