NICOLE RUSSELL: College girls standing up for fair play gives hope to younger athletes

I’m a mother of daughters (and sons). It’s heartbreaking to think of my daughters practicing hard in a sport only to lose to a team with a transgender person playing on the opposing girls’ team, bolstered by that athlete’s inherent physiological advantages.

Women at the collegiate level are standing up for fair play, but they’re still facing an uphill climb.

Over this past weekend, players on the University of Nevada, Reno women’s volleyball team were standing up for their right to safety and fair play on the volleyball court. On Saturday, several members of the team participated in a “Women Sports are for Women Only.”

“It was important not only for the girls now who are playing against a biological male, but for the future of women’s sports,” team captain Sia LiiLii said during the event. “I mean, this person is taking an opportunity from a female who just like me worked her whole life to get to the dream of being a collegiate D-1 athlete. Me and my teammates all decided that this is something that we wouldn’t stand for and something that we need to speak out about.”

After the teammates announced that they were going to forfeit the Oct. 26 match against San Jose State University, a team with a transgender player, school administrators clarified the team’s decision with their own statement.

“The players’ decision and statement were made independently, and without consultation with the University or the athletic department. The players’ decision also does not represent the position of the University,” the University of Nevada, Reno’s statement reads.

The University of Nevada, Reno administrators also cited NCAA rules about equality and said that although the match would continue, athletes could choose not to participate and the school would not discipline them for missing it.

The University of Nevada, Reno is now one of several teams that have forfeited matches against San Jose State University. Boise State, Wyoming State and Utah State — all a part of the Mountain West Conference — have done so.

The women on these volleyball teams are taking a controversial matter into their own hands and at the risk of their own athletic careers as Division 1 athletes. Their actions are likely a response to the lack of a stand made by the governing bodies of organizations like the NCAA.

At least 24 states have instituted laws that protect women’s sports, ensuring that women can play only against other biological women, but this is often at a high school level. In April, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced a policy that banned transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

While it may be complex to figure out how to treat gender dysphoria in minors, or even exactly what legislative policies protect all people regarding this issue equally, the issue of transgender athletes in sports seems clear.

Collegiate transgender athletes possess obvious physiological advantages to women. This is most obvious in the case of University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas. Thomas was the first transgender swimmer to win an NCAA swimming championship in 2022. Thomas was a mediocre swimmer on the men’s team, ranking 65th in the 500-yard freestyle. But when Thomas moved to the women’s team as a transgender athlete, the same swimmer ranked 1st in that race.

The swimming world has dealt with this issue differently — and much more fairly — than the volleyball world.

In 2022, World Aquatics, the international governing body for swimming, banned transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from competing in and against women. The organization also created an “open” category just for transgender athletes.

During the 2023 Swimming World Cup in Berlin, World Aquatics canceled their “open” category because no athletes applied to swim in those races. Either transgender swimmer athletes are rare, or do not want to swim in a category unto themselves.

Solo categories for transgender athletes in individual sports like swimming or track make sense, but this is nearly impossible for team sports like volleyball.
By the looks of it, these college athletes like the women on the volleyball team at the University of Nevada, Reno have decided the best way to ensure fairness is to bow out. This is costly but brave and it gives hope to younger athletes.

Perhaps these efforts will help secure fair play for my own daughters so that if they ever reach the rank of competitive college athlete, they can rest assured they are playing sports in the fairest way possible.

This Story originally came from humanevents.com

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
November 22, 2024
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Utility Companies Are Not On Our Side

Authored by Linnea Leuken & H. Sterlin Burnett via RealClearPolitics,

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

Under the banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim of providing reliable, affordable power – the rationale for the electric utilities’ monopolies in the first place – was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back, arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded assets.

Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power. In addition, they passed on the costs of the expanded grid to ratepayers and taxpayers. Effectively, elected officials and the PUCs, with a wink and a nod, indemnified utilities for power supply failures, allowing utilities to claim that aging grid infrastructure and climate change were to blame for failures rather than the increased percentage of intermittent power added to the grid at their direction.

Today, utilities have enthusiastically embraced the push for renewable (but less reliable) resources, primarily wind and solar. PUCs guarantee a high rate of return for all new power source (wind, solar, and battery) installations, which has resulted in the construction of ever more and bigger wind, solar, and battery facilities. The costlier, the more profitable – regardless of their compromised ability to provide reliable power or the cost impact on residential, commercial, and industrial ratepayers.

A new report from The Heartland Institute demonstrates the significant financial incentives from government and financiers for utilities to turn away from affordable energy sources like natural gas and coal, and even nuclear, and instead aggressively pursue wind and solar in particular. All of this is done in the name of pursuing net zero emissions, which every single major utility company in the country boasts about on their corporate reports and websites. Reliability and affordability come secondary to the decarbonization agenda.

Dominion Energy is a good example, as they are one of the most aggressive movers on climate-focused policy. Dominion CEO Robert Blue speaks excitedly about government-forced transitions to a wind- and solar-dominated grid in interviews. During one interview with a renewable energy podcast, he said:

“[S]ometimes the government needs to focus on outcomes. We’re trying to address a climate crisis, and we are going to need to move quickly to do that.” In the same interview, he expressed enthusiasm about federal policy that would achieve a government-directed transition.

And why wouldn’t he? Dominion, like most utilities, is granted government tax credits and guarantees on returns for investing in large, expensive projects like offshore wind, the most expensive source of electric power. The bigger the project, the bigger the profit with guaranteed returns.

Also, onshore wind companies have received special “take limits” from the Fish and Wildlife Service to kill protected bald eagles and golden eagles, while prosecuting oil companies if birds are injured or killed on their sites.

Net zero policies are not the environmental panacea that climate change activists proclaim. Industrial-scale wind and solar use substantially more land than conventional energy resources, disrupting ecosystems and destroying wildlife habitats in the process.

And despite recent technological advances, wind and solar are still not dispatchable resources, meaning they cannot provide consistent power at all times needed. Refuting claims made by environmentalists and utilities that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electric power, costs have risen steeply as the use of wind and solar has increased. Customers of Duke Energy in Kentucky, for example, are paying 78% higher rates in the wake of coal-fired plant closings.

Politicians and utilities are pushing for even more electrification for appliances and vehicles despite the fact that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have repeatedly warned in recent years that adding more demand for electric power while replacing reliable power sources with intermittent renewables is destabilizing the power system.

It appears that the utilities prioritize short-term profits over grid reliability or keeping costs reasonable – and the government officials who are supposed to keep them in check are only encouraging them. It doesn’t need to be this way. The U.S. grid was not always this way. Only in recent years, with the obsessive pursuit of net zero, have rolling black and brownouts become so common.

Today, utility companies are sending lobbyists to conservative policymakers in order to convince them that the utilities have our best interests in mind. Their track record tells another story. Meanwhile, Americans have less reliable electricity at higher costs.

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org, X: @LinneaLueken) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2024 – 06:30