 |
|
|
|||||
When wood thrushes arrive in northern Mississippi on their spring migration and begin to serenade my neighborhood with their ethereal, harmonized song, its one of the great joys of the season. Its also a minor miracle. These small creatures have just flown more than 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers), all the way from Central America. Other birds undertake even longer journeys the Swainsons thrush, for example, nests as far north as the boreal forests of Alaska and spends the nonbreeding season in northern South America, traveling up to 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) each way. These stunning feats of travel are awe-inspiring, making it that much more tragic when they are cut short by a deadly collision with a glass window. This happens with alarming regularity. Two recent scientific studies estimate that more than 1 billion birds and as many as 5.19 billion die from collisions with sheet glass each year in the United States alone, sometimes immediately but often from their injuries. In fact, window collisions are now considered the top human cause of bird deaths. Due to window collisions and other causes, bird populations across North America have declined more than 29% from their 1970 levels, likely with major consequences for the worlds ecosystems. These collisions occur on every type of building, from homes to skyscrapers. At the University of Mississippi campus, where I teach and conduct research as an ecologist, my colleagues and I have been testing some creative solutions. Why glass is so often deadly for birds Most frequently, glass acts as a mirror, reflecting clear sky or habitat. There is no reason for a bird to slow down when there appears to be a welcoming tree or shrub ahead. These head-on collisions frequently result in brain injuries, to which birds often succumb immediately. In other cases, birds are stunned by the collision and eventually fly off, but many of those individuals also eventually perish from brain swelling. Other injuries, to wings or legs, for example, can leave birds unable to fly and vulnerable to cats or other predators. If you find an injured bird, contact a local wildlife rehabilitator. Which windows are riskiest Some windows are much worse than others, depending on their proximity to bushes and other bird habitats, what is reflected in them, and how interior lighting exacerbates or diminishes the mirror effect. On our campus, some buildings with a great deal of glass surface area kill surprisingly few birds, while other small sets of windows are disproportionately deadly. One particular elevated walkway with glass on both sides between the chemistry and pharmacy buildings is a notoriously dangerous spot. The glass kills migratory birds each spring and fall as they try to pass between the two buildings on their way to The Grove, the universitys central-campus park area with large old oak trees. A stunned Swainsons thrush sits on the ground in front of a window on campus. The bird, which likely hit the window, eventually recovered and flew away. [Photo: Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi] During the pandemic in 2020, student Emma Counce did the heart-heavy work of performing a survey of 11 campus buildings almost daily during spring migration. She found 72 bird fatalities in seven weeks. Five years later, my ornithology students completed a new survey and found 62 mortalities over the course of five weeks in 2025, demonstrating that we still have a lot of work to do to make our campus safe for migratory birds. Thrushes, perhaps due to their propensity for whizzing through tight spaces in the shady forest understory, have been disproportionately represented among the victims. Others include colorful songbirds northern parulas, black-and-white warblers, prothonotary warblers, Kentucky warblers, buntings, vireos and tanagers. How to make windows less dangerous The good thing is that everyone can do something to lower the risk. Films, stickers or strings can be added on the exterior of windows, creating dots or lines, 2 to 4 inches apart, that break up reflections to give the appearance of a barrier. Exterior screens and blinds work great too. Just adding a few predator silhouette stickers is not effective, by the way the treatment needs to span the whole window. Putting film with dots on windows, like this one at the University of Mississippi, can help birds spot the glass and stop in time. Without the dots, the reflection can look like more trees are ahead instead of glass and a hallway. [Photo: Jason Hoeksema/University of Mississippi] When applied properly, window treatments can make a huge difference. An inspiring example is McCormick Place in Chicago, the countrys largest convention center, which notoriously killed nearly 1,000 birds in a single night in 2023. After workers applied dot film to an area of the buildings windows equivalent to two football fields, bird mortality at the lakeside building has been reduced by 95%. The Bird Collision Prevention Alliance provides information on options for retrofitting home or office windows to make them more bird friendly. Options for new windows are also becoming more common. For example, the new Center for Science & Technology Innovation on my campus, which features many windows, mostly used bird-friendly glass with subtle polka dots built into it. This spring, we found that it killed only four birds, despite a very high surface area of glass. How you can help When trying to make a difference on your home turf, I suggest starting small. Make note of which specific windows have killed birds in the past, and treat them first. Use it as an opportunity to learn what approach might work best for you and your building. Either order a product or make something yourself and get it installed. Then do another, and tell a friend. At the office, talk to people, find others who care and build a team to make gradual change. With some creative solutions, anyone can help reduce at least this major risk. Jason Hoeksema is a professor of ecology at the University of Mississippi. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
Americans electricity bills tend to tick up each year in line with inflation. But upgrades to electric wires, reinforcing and protecting power lines from severe weather, and changing fuel costs among other factors are sending rates soaring. High electricity consumption from data centers and other sources of rising demand will likely cause further increases in the near future. The impact on consumers is particularly dramatic in Pennsylvania, where rate hikes are widespread. For example, the monthly bill for a PECO residential customer who uses 700 kilowatt hours of electricity monthly increased 10% or US$13.58 in 2025. These bills will go up another $2.70 each month in 2026. Retail price adjustments approved by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission for most electric distribution utilities effective December 2024 led to higher bills for many customers across the state. In some parts of Pennsylvania, the estimated increases topped an estimated 30%. As professors who work in the areas of energy law and electricity markets, we know electricity costs are rising in many parts of the U.S. But Pennsylvania faces distinct challenges related to its electric grid the maze of wires and generators that drive both the growing demand for electricity and the limited supply. PJM and the electric grid Pennsylvania power plants produce a lot of electricity. In fact, the Keystone State is the the largest exporter of electricity in the U.S. and has been for many years. But the electricity Pennsylvania produces doesnt always stay in state. Thats because Pennsylvanias electric grid is managed by a company called PJM. PJM coordinates the flow of electricity through all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, and it ensures the wholesale electricity transmission system operates reliably and safely. Pennsylvania electric utilities, such as PECO or Duquesne Light, then distribute this wholesale electricity to retail customers, including homeowners and renters. PJM requires the utilities to ensure ahead of time that they can meet their customers future electricity demands, including during heat waves and winter storms. This requirement is met using a market called a capacity auction, in which electricity suppliers bid to provide physical infrastructure that will generate electricity in the future. The prices at the 2025-2026 PJM capacity auction were more than 800% higher than the previous year, in part due to the growing demand for electricity within PJM. This amounts to tens of billions of dollars in extra costs. Power plants in Pennsylvania cant simply stop exporting electricity and supply more in-state power because they dispatch their power into the regional grid operated by PJM, and the flow of electricity is dictated by the physical structure of this grid. Soaring demand from data centers U.S. electricity demand rose 3% in 2024 and is expected to rise even more rapidly in the coming years. Much of this new demand comes from data centers, which support everything from AI applications and data storage think of the thousands of emails and files backed up on our computers to sports betting, online retailers such as Amazon, and national security applications such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Pennsylvania is on the same electric grid as Virginia, which hosts about a quarter of all data center capacity in the Americas. New data centers are also being built in Pennsylvania. Rising demand is also driven by the increase in electric vehicles and the replacement of gas- and oil-based furnaces with electric heat pumps. These replacements are ultimately more energy efficient but require electricity. Bottlenecks in supply The increase in electricity demand within PJM is happening at the same time that supply is shrinking. Many old generating plants in the PJM grid are retiring as they near the end of their useful lives and become less profitable for plant operators, particularly as natural gas and solar ecome more affordable. Some of these older power plants also emit a lot of pollution and are costly to retrofit to meet current pollution limits. Beyond the challenge of plant retirements, PJM has been slow to allow hundreds of new proposed power plants most of them solar- and battery-based to connect to transmission lines. This long interconnection queue prevents new, needed generation from coming online. This is happening even though companies are eager and ready to build more generation and battery storage. Aging infrastructure and growing weather extremes One of the primary recent drivers of high consumer electric bills is that the utilities have been slow to upgrade their aging wires. Many have recently made major investments in new infrastructure and in some cases are burying or strengthening wires to protect them from increasingly extreme weather. Electricity customers are footing the bill for this work. Response from policymakers In response to rising electricity prices, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a legal complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission against PJM in December 2024. This complaint blamed PJMs capacity auction design for creating unnecessary costs for consumers. According to the settlement reached after the complaint, PJMs price caps will be 35% lower at the next major capacity auction. This reduction in wholesale prices could limit retail price increases. But this is at best a temporary fix. It doesnt address the increasing demand, aging power infrastructure battered by extreme weather, or transmission bottleneck. In order for Pennsylvania residents to see lower electric bills anytime soon, more changes are needed. For example, many experts previously observed that PJM needs to fix the queue and get online the many power plants that are ready to build and just waiting for a transmission interconnection. While PJM has reformed its queue process, the queue is still long. New power plants are not going up fast enough, in part due to additional challenges such as local opposition and supply chain and financing issues. Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Hannah Wiseman is a professor of law at Penn State. Seth Blumsack is a professor of energy and environmental economics and international affairs at Penn State. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
The Justice Department announced plans Wednesday to abandon lawsuits against police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky, a reversal of Biden-era initiatives to reform policing in two cities that sparked a national reckoning around racial justice. The Civil Rights Division will be taking all necessary steps to dismiss the Louisville and Minneapolis lawsuits with prejudice, to close the underlying investigations into the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments, and to retract the Biden administrations findings of constitutional violations, the Justice Department said in a press release. The decision to back away from police reform comes just days before the five-year anniversary of George Floyds death. Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty of second-degree murder in 2021. The Justice Department also plans to throw out any findings of constitutional violations and close ongoing investigations into police departments in Phoenix; Trenton, New Jersey; Memphis; Oklahoma City; and the state of Louisiana. Reversing Bidens planned policing reforms Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, characterized the Biden administrations lawsuits as part of an anti-police agenda. Today, we are ending the Biden Civil Rights Divisions failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees, Dhillon said. The policy shift signals an aggressive return to the first Trump administrations disinterest in police oversight and a likely rollback of other federal reforms put in place over the last four years. In its waning days, the Biden administration rushed to finalize a Justice Department deal for police oversight in Minneapolis, securing unanimous approval from the Minneapolis City Council in early January. The agreement, known as a consent decree, was initiated in 2023 after a damning Justice Department report accused the Minneapolis Police Department of racial discrimination, First Amendment violations, and the unlawful use of deadly force. In both Minneapolis and Louisville, consent decrees still await a federal judges approval. A powerful tool for police accountability Consent decrees are one of the federal governments most powerful tools for holding police departments accountable for civil rights violations, dangerous policies, and the wrongful use of deadly force. The Department of Justice regularly pursues these long-term road maps for reform with law enforcement agencies facing federal lawsuits, creating a framework for oversight that can endure until a judge decides that its requirements have been met. During the the Obama administration, 15 law enforcement agencies entered into consent decrees with the Justice Department to resolve lawsuits around policingup from just three during the Bush era. During Trumps first term, the Justice Department introduced only one new investigation of its own and even made efforts to stall out planned reforms in Baltimore, though it ultimately failed. Most notably, Trumps then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions narrowed the scope of consent decrees, introducing new requirements for sunset dates and limiting the reforms they could require. Under Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded those sweeping Trump-era changes to consent reforms in 2021, clearing a path for the Justice Department to again leverage the powerful agreements when investigating law enforcement misdeeds and civil rights abuses. Trumps early agenda makes it clear that he plans to leave police departments to their own devices in the coming years. That hands-off approach puts the fate of some cities planned police reforms up in the air or, like much of Trumps agenda, up to the courts.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||