One point I didn’t make in last week’s column on California’s endless solar infighting: More rooftop solar systems could mean (relatively) less need for sprawling desert solar farms that harm sensitive ecosystems.

Don’t get me wrong — tackling the climate crisis will require a lot of big solar farms, including on public lands in the desert. As I’ve reported previously, there aren’t nearly enough rooftops, parking lots and other urban spaces to support the amount of small-scale solar needed to replace fossil fuels.

Some Joshua trees will, almost inevitably, be razed for solar farms.

But California elected officials and energy regulators often overlook the environmental benefits of rooftop solar. Which is a shame, both for endangered wildlife and for political reasons. Americans love their public lands. When politicians such as Gov. Gavin Newsom fail to support rooftop solar, many voters consider it a sign that they don’t care about the desert, or Joshua trees, or at-risk tortoises.

Again, here’s my column on the debate over California’s rooftop solar incentives. Also check out this great article by Canary Media’s Jeff St. John, which lays out the arguments for and against the plan in more detail.

A few more stories about the energy transition:

• California’s pullback of rooftop solar incentives has contributed to serious financial woes for Sunnova, one of the nation’s largest residential solar companies. (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)
• California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) is pushing permitting reform to accelerate construction of housing, clean energy, electric vehicle chargers and more. (Ben Christopher, CalMatters)
• Work has begun to convert a large stretch of America’s most contaminated nuclear site, in Washington state, to a massive solar and battery plant. (Keith Schneider, New York Times)
• The U.S. Supreme Court is considering the fate of proposed nuclear waste storage sites in New Mexico and Texas. It’s not clear how the justices will rule. (Mark Sherman, Associated Press)

One more thing about Newsom: In a win for the fossil fuel and chemical industries, the governor delayed final regulations for California’s landmark law to reduce single-use plastics (which are made from oil and gas). Plastics are terrible for human health and the environment, as The Times’ Susanne Rust notes in her story on the delay.

In related news, the director of California’s recycling agency, Rachel Wagoner, helped write the single-use plastics law — before going to work for the plastics and packaging companies that critics say are attempting to derail the law. There’s now been an ethics complaint filed against her. Here’s the story from Susanne.

Here’s what else is happening around the West:

THE TRUMP REPORT

President Trump claps as he addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 4.

(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)

Where to begin? That’s always the question with President Trump these days.

How about water:

• The Trump administration is cutting about 10% of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s California staff. The cuts could threaten public safety and make it harder to deliver water reliably. (Ian James, L.A. Times)
• Between Reclamation job cuts, random water releases from dams, deportation raids and now painful tariffs, President Trump seems determined to make life harder for Central Valley farmers, even though they’ve been some of his staunchest supporters. (Jessica Garrison and Rachel Uranga, L.A. Times)
• Will Trump and advisor Elon Musk’s attacks on the California Coastal Commission spark another uprising to protect the state’s treasured coastline, like the one five decades ago? (Steve Lopez, L.A. Times)

Meanwhile, public lands continue to face myriad threats:

• Karen Budd-Falen, who says she will serve as a top official at the Interior Department, is a “private property rights extremist” who has spent decades “fighting against federal oversight and environmental protections.” Her appointment has yet to be confirmed by the department. (Jonathan P. Thompson, the Land Desk)
• Oil-and-gas industry trade group leader Kathleen Sgamma, who has been nominated to lead the Bureau of Land Management, won’t talk about her conflicts of interest — or her past comments that there’s too much federal land. (Jimmy Tobias and Chris D’Angelo, Public Domain)
• Republicans across the Western U.S. are continuing in their quest to privatize public lands for the benefit of oil, gas and other extractive industries. (Chris D’Angelo and Roque Planas, Public Domain)
• Here’s a list of National Park Service and other land-management office buildings in the West that the Trump administration plans to close. (Jonathan P. Thompson, the Land Desk)

Yosemite National Park workers hang an upside-down American flag as a sign of distress near Horsetail Fall last month.

(Tracy Barbutes / San Francisco Chronicle)

Politically speaking, attacking public lands doesn’t make much sense. A record number of people visited U.S. national parks last year — nearly 332 million, as The Times’ Jack Dolan writes. The outdoor recreation economy is a job creator too, capable of helping rural communities thrive even when coal plants shut down.

Yet Trump and his allies keep prioritizing oil and gas extraction. My colleague Lila Seidman examined which of the state’s national monuments face the greatest risk from the administration’s “energy dominance” agenda.

Trump’s forest management leaves a lot to be desired too. Lila reports that U.S. Forest Service job cuts could interfere with surveys for spotted owls and other at-risk species — which could in turn impede wildfire mitigation projects that need environmental analyses to move forward, leaving California at greater risk of burning. Trump’s executive order promoting timber production, meanwhile, would be devastating for the climate, critics say.

Lest we forget clean energy, Trump’s actions are likely to slow the transition to climate-friendly power:

• Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Mexico, should they take effect, would make electric vehicles more expensive. They also could slow the much-needed expansion of the electric grid. (E&E News)
• The Trump administration may try to hold back $1.1 billion in promised federal funds to electrify trucks and other equipment at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. (David Ferris, E&E News)
• L.A. County officials have no idea whether the federal government will come through with promised funding for planned bus and rail line expansions ahead of the 2028 Olympics. (Colleen Shalby, L.A. Times)
• In better news, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says Congress can’t block California’s 2035 ban on gasoline vehicle sales. (David Shepardson, Reuters)

Amid the tumult, many Americans are speaking out. To cite one example: On Friday, hundreds of Angelenos protested the Trump administration at a Stand Up for Science rally in Westwood. Details here from Lila Seidman.

Musk is feeling the heat too. Frustrated Americans demonstrated against him outside at least 90 Tesla shops and charging stations across the country. Meanwhile, Tesla sales are slumping in California, France and Germany.

WATER AND FIRE

A formerly sunken boat sits high and dry along the shoreline of Lake Mead near Boulder City, Nev., in 2022.

(John Locher / Associated Press)

“Rarely have I enjoyed a day more than this. I waked up coming through the Mojave Desert, and all that desert needs is water, and I believe you are going to get it.” — Teddy Roosevelt, May 7, 1903

I came across these words from President Roosevelt from a speech he gave in Redlands, in Southern California’s Inland Empire, during his first trip to the Golden State. Alas, in an era of climate crisis, a more accurate reflection on water in the West might be this quote from the poet Hanif Abdurraqib, as cited by water writer John Fleck in a recent blog post: “We get to determine what kind of apocalypse we’d like to have.”

Tragic, hopeful or both? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

Personally, I have hope for the future — I always have and like to think I always will. Although it’s tough to read that California’s Chinook salmon population is in such bad shape that regulators may cancel fishing season for the third straight year, which has never happened before, as The Times’ Ian James reports.

It’s also tough to read about a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to keep polluted stormwater out of the ocean — especially knowing that the city of San Francisco filed the lawsuit that prompted the court’s decision. Details here from Ian and David G. Savage.

On the Los Angeles County wildfire front, survivors are still coping with a whole lot of grief:

• The fires have taken a nightmarish toll on children’s mental health. Some kids have seen their development set back by years. (Jenny Gold, L.A. Times)
• “They followed the American bootstraps prescription, did what they were told and graduated from college, expecting the promise of upward mobility. But stability remains elusive.” The Eaton fire brought even more uncertainty to Latino families. (Daisy Verduzco Reyes, L.A. Times)
• More than 90% of people living in the Eaton and Palisades fire burn zones have lived in L.A. County for more than 11 years. But 40% have thought about leaving because of the fires. (Hailey Branson-Potts, L.A. Times)

Many fire survivors also are unsure whether their water is safe to drink. Ever since cancer-causing benzene was found in Santa Rosa’s water after the 2017 Tubbs fire, officials have learned a great deal about testing water for chemicals post-fire. They’re putting those lessons to use in L.A., Noah Haggerty and Ian James write.

Dealing with insurance companies is another headache for many victims. Meanwhile, a State Farm executive was caught on video saying disturbing stuff about the California wildfire situation, Laurence Darmiento reports.

What caused the fires? Still unclear. But L.A. County is the latest entity to sue Southern California Edison over the Eaton fire, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars. Here’s the story from Rebecca Ellis and Salvador Hernandez.

Two more unique angles on the blazes:

• Scientists at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are using an archive of carefully preserved feathers to study how wildfire smoke affects bird behavior. (Corinne Purtill, L.A. Times)
• Will fires in North Carolina prompt congressional Republicans to fork over wildfire aid for California with no strings attached? Very possibly yes, if history is any guide. (Michael Hiltzik, L.A. Times)

ONE MORE THING

President Theodore Roosevelt with conservationist John Muir at Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park in 1903.

(Getty Images)

Let’s end with a bit more from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1903 remarks in Redlands, Calif.:

“Coming today over the mountain range, coming down here, seeing what you have done, makes me realize more and more how much this whole country should lay stress on what can be done by the wise use of water, and therefore, the wise use of the forests on the mountains. … The people of our country have grown to realize and are more and more in practice showing that they realize how indispensable it is to preserve the great forests on the mountains and to use aright the water supply that those forests conserve.”

Indeed.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

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