The world has changed since I started writing Boiling Point five years ago. There are more solar farms, fewer coal plants and more movies about climate change. We spend a lot more time thinking about artificial intelligence.

In other ways, not much is different. After a four-year hiatus, climate denier Donald Trump will soon be president again. Temperatures are still breaking records. California is still many years away from finishing its bullet train.

I’ve reported on all these topics. Now I’m also hosting a podcast about them.

Today, the Los Angeles Times is launching Boiling Point, a podcast about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Yes, that’s the same name as this newsletter. I hope you’ll subscribe and listen.

The first episode is available today; it’s about the future of Los Angeles in an era of worsening wildfires, and how the millions of people who live here can learn to adapt as the climate crisis worsens. I talked with Kelly Sanders, a USC engineering professor and, until recently, an advisor to the Biden White House on energy policy.

She made a compelling case that we can build a more resilient city and lead the world in climate-friendly energy. It won’t be easy; change never is. But L.A. can’t look the same as it did before the ongoing infernos, she said.

“We’re a very reactive society,” she said. “Every decision that we make from here on forward has to be proactive.”

New episodes of Boiling Point drop every Thursday. Please tell us what you think!

As always, here’s what else is happening around the West:

FALLOUT FROM THE FIRES

Homes smolder to ashes during the Eaton fire in Altadena on Jan. 8.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Angelenos will spend years processing and recovering from this month’s fires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked the Legislature to approve $2.5 billion for disaster response, including $1.5 billion to prepare for future blazes and other weather extremes, The Times’ Taryn Luna and Andrea Castillo write. Some lawmakers have talked about reviving a proposal to require oil companies to help pay the costs of climate-fueled disasters; the industry successfully lobbied to kill a previous version of the bill, per the Guardian’s Tom Perkins.

Meanwhile, a Times analysis found that California officials “have repeatedly declined to fund wildfire prevention efforts in communities devastated by the Palisades fire.” Here’s the story from my colleague Connor Sheets.

It’s possible electric utilities could be found liable for some wildfire costs. In the months leading up to the Eaton fire, state officials criticized Southern California Edison over its inspections of electric lines in high-fire-risk areas, The Times’ Melody Petersen and Jenny Jarvie report. Fire investigators are working to determine whether Edison equipment ignited the Eaton fire, although the company has said it does not believe that to be the case.

If Edison is ultimately found responsible — still a huge “if” — the billions of dollars in liability could threaten the stability of California’s utility industry, Jenny writes.

Those are just some of the cascading consequences from the deadly conflagrations. A few others:

If we’re lucky, the fires will at least accelerate long-dormant conversations — about how best to live in the “wildland-urban interface,” for example. As my colleague Mary McNamara writes, “with climate change forcing Southern California into a maddening cycle of deluge and drought, people are beginning to question the wisdom of building, or rebuilding, communities that edge up to the more wilder areas of L.A.’s varied topography.”

We should also talk about the fact that inmate firefighters, more than 900 of whom have battled the L.A. fires, are paid far less than minimum wage. Kim Kardashian says that’s shameful, as The Times’ Nardine Saad reports.

Alas, much of the dialogue has thus far been dominated by fact-free political bluster. My colleague Michael Hiltzik, for instance, explains why there’s no scientific basis for claims made by President-elect Trump and other Republican politicians that a tiny Northern California fish is responsible for the devastation here in L.A.

At a Senate confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, Trump’s pick for U.S. energy secretary — fossil fuel industry executive Chris Wright — stood by his previous comments that “the hype over wildfires is just hype” to justify harmful climate policies, as the Washington Post’s Maxine Joselow reports. Wright’s consistent rejection of a link between climate change and worsening wildfires is directly at odds with the scientific literature.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Morning light glows on the Chuckwalla Mountains on Jan. 7.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

In one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden established two national monuments in California, including the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla National Monument south of Joshua Tree National Park. The White House says Biden has protected more lands and waters than any president, as The Times’ Lila Seidman reports.

Native American tribes and conservation activists cheered the monument designations. Environmentalists were also pleased that federal officials chose to retain endangered species protections for grizzly bears in the western U.S., rejecting challenges from Montana and Wyoming, as the Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni reports.

In a few other cases, though, climate advocates weren’t so happy with the Biden administration:

• Biden’s appointees did not approve California’s request to let the state ban the sale of new diesel trucks — prompting state officials to withdraw the request instead of facing almost certain denial from the incoming Trump administration. (Russ Mitchell, L.A. Times)
• Amid opposition from Republican politicians and the timber industry, Biden officials dropped their plan to protect old-growth forests from logging. (Matthew Brown, Associated Press)

Environmentalists did have other news to celebrate. In a major legal victory, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block lawsuits from California and other states seeking billions of dollars from oil companies to pay for climate damages, as The Times’ David G. Savage reports. The Supreme Court also refused to hear Utah’s lawsuit seeking control over 18.5 million acres of federal public lands, per the Salt Lake Tribune’s Anastasia Hufham.

Elsewhere on public lands, the longstanding conflict between cattle and native tule elk at Northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore is (mostly) coming to an end. Most ranchers at the beloved seashore have agreed to take money from the Nature Conservancy to cease operations, as John Beck reports for the Press Democrat.

Before moving on to the energy transition, two water stories:

THE ENERGY TRANSITION

A pool of water adjacent to Controlled Thermal Resources’ lithium drill rig, seen in 2021 near the Salton Sea, is part of a wildlife area managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The companies racing to pull lithium from beneath Southern California’s Salton Sea got some good news.

Environmental justice activists had sued Imperial County officials over their approval of one of the region’s first lithium extraction projects, saying the county hadn’t done enough to study air pollution and water consumption. Activists also worried that not enough economic benefits would flow to low-income Imperial Valley residents.

But a judge rejected the environmental challenge, inewsource’s Philip Salata reports. The ruling could have statewide and even global implications. Lithium is a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries — and there’s a lot of it sitting beneath the Salton Sea, as I’ve reported previously. The firms seeking to extract lithium also intend to build geothermal power plants, which can produce renewable electricity 24/7, unlike solar and wind farms.

In other good news for geothermal power, Houston-based Fervo Energy secured another $255 million in funding to develop advanced geothermal plants, ESG Dive’s Zoya Mirza writes. For context, I wrote last year about Fervo’s landmark contract to sell electricity to Southern California Edison from its first major power plant, in Utah.

As is often the case, there are some conflicts between clean energy and conservation:

• The Biden administration proposed protecting a rare northern Nevada butterfly via the Endangered Species Act, which could spell trouble for a proposed geothermal power plant. (Jeniffer Solis, Nevada Current)
• The administration also proposed banning lithium exploration near Nevada’s Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. It’s hard to know whether Trump will follow through. (Alan Halaly, Las Vegas-Review Journal)

Meanwhile, federal officials continue to announce as much clean energy funding as possible before President-elect Trump takes office next week. One of the latest announcements: a $1.76-billion conditional loan guarantee for a long-duration storage project in California’s Kern County. The project will use “compressed air” technology to store large amounts of renewable energy, as Canary Media’s Jeff St. John reports.

For background, I wrote about the Willow Rock compressed air project two years ago, when its developer signed a $775-million contract to sell power to a group of local governments along California’s Central Coast.

Two more energy stories:

• President Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to lease land for artificial intelligence data centers, as well as clean energy projects to power those data centers. (Robert Walton, Utility Dive)
• Coal plants owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, some of them in the West, emit more nitrogen oxide pollution than those of any other major U.S. power company, in part because Berkshire has installed so few pollution controls, a Reuters investigation finds. (Tim McLaughlin and Joshua Schneyer, Reuters)

ONE MORE THING

A convoy of logging trucks pulls into Denver in 1977 after carrying a giant peanut, carved from a redwood, to Washington, D.C., to protest the expansion of Redwood National Park in Northern California.

(Denver Post via Getty Images)

Let’s finish the last Boiling Point of the Biden administration with a blast from the past.

Before President Jimmy Carter expanded Redwood National Park, angry loggers sent him a 9-ton “peanut” (really it was a huge carving from a massive redwood tree) in protest. As The Times’ Hailey Branson-Potts reports, Carter rejected the offering.

Simpler times? Or a sign of discord to come? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

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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