“We congratulate Simon Kinsella for his fortitude and diligence. Other communities are in line for similar threats as from South Fork Wind proposal (Long Island). Pushback to agencies that thrust agreements and permits in favor of wind development without appropriate assessment is essential, economic issues aside.”

Simon Kinsella of Suffolk County New York is no stranger to legal proceedings. His filing last month with the District Court at District of Columbia follows a neat pattern of Citizen “water bearer” to environmental concerns raised for years now regarding South Fork Offshore Wind (Ørsted) with the Long Island Power Authority and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Department of the Interior).

The Biden Administration’s priority is industrializing large strips of coastal ocean water to get the radically uneconomic offshore wind industry going on the East Coast.…

“In my period at Cato (1990–present), “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’“, is probably our most important Policy Analysis in the energy/environment area. Bradley’s thorough review and analysis (60 pages, 325 footnotes) was a real pushback against the viability of ‘green’ energy in theory and practice.”

– Jerry Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director, Natural Resource Studies, Cato Institute, 2012

On the fifteenth [25th] anniversary of “Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’” (yesterday’s post), I recall, with pride, a lot of hard work that went into supplying the author with information about California’s wind and solar experience.

At the time I was working in the belly of the beast, the California Energy Commission (CEC) in Sacramento. The Commission was a major proponent of all things renewable, almost to the point of fanaticism.…

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.

The recent action of the U.S. Department of Justice against a major wind developer for ‘takings’ of golden eagles, as well as the tip-of-the-iceberg problem of such wind carnage, is major news. The post today revisits a decade-old dodge of the problem by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), now part of the American Clean Power Association. So where were the real environmentalists then–and where are they today?

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The double-standard and hypocrisy of the AWEA can be documented from their August 19, 2011, release: Fact Check: Fox News Off Base on Bird Collisions, concerning Altamont Pass’s impact on golden eagles. The op-ed follows with comment:

FoxNews.Com carried a story on bird collisions a few days ago with a number of misleading statements.  We covered much of the same ground with a response to the Los Angeles Times in early June (see “News story draws questionable conclusions from eagle collisions with old turbines,” June 6, 2011), and won’t repeat that material at length.…