Georgia on right track toward cost-efficient energy

Recently, a letter writer asked for action on Citizen Climate Lobby’s key agenda items. These included clean energy permitting reforms, the European Union’s carbon border adjustment and, most harmful to Georgia, a carbon production fee on fossil fuel companies. This last item is particularly devastating to Georgia because of our reliance on natural gas.

As the state’s longest and strongest supporter of electric mobility, I have repeatedly said that we cannot close fossil plants and add millions of EVs in Georgia simultaneously. Pick one.

And we can’t attract new businesses with new electric loads, like the Hyundai universe of companies, and shut down baseload power plants.

Most of the left-leaning knowledge system’s hostility towards cost-effective energy drives them to consistently overstate the negative side effect of fossil fuel and other forms of cost-effective energy, including nuclear, as Alex Epstein eloquently puts it in his book, “Fossil Future.”

Georgia is on the right track. No carbon penalties needed.

TIM ECHOLS, COMMISSIONER, GEORGIA PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION

Cluster bombs could be ‘grand finale’ of Ukraine war

Anyone who saw fireworks over the Fourth of July likely saw a “grand finale” when a single rocket carried multiple explosives. These are like cluster bombs the U.S. is shipping to Ukraine. One artillery shell releases several bomblets which spread out, hit the ground and detonate.

I worked in a factory in Toledo which made these used in Vietnam. These wicked weapons sometimes don’t detonate and become like land mines, unsafe for civilians later. I have seen unexploded ordnance on the ground in Vietnam, land mines in the Golan Heights and there are land mines in Uganda.

As a U.S. Marines supply officer, I understand “Beans, Bullets, and Band-Aids,” and Ukraine is low on artillery. This is all we have left to give and Russia has already used them.

I believe this weapon can cause Gettysburg-like destruction of an army, so this may be part of the grand finale for Ukraine’s effort against Russia. Witnesses may lose interest in fireworks.

DANIEL F. KIRK, KENNESAW

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The 2019 March of Dads, the signature event of the Dad Gang, at Piedmont Park in Atlanta.

Credit: Aric Thompson

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Laurence Walker, a volunteer with the Cajun Navy Relief, left, takes two volunteers out on his boat on Lake Oconee to search for Gary Jones, Tuesday, February, 18, 2024, in Eatonton, Ga. The Putnam County sheriff is investigating and searching after Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Nicole Wilson and an Atlanta private school coach Gary Jones went missing on Lake Oconee over a week ago, Saturday Feb. 8th. The body of Wilson was found Sunday, Feb. 9th and Jones has not been found. (Jason Getz / AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com