electric bill

When I tell people what I cover for the Los Angeles Times, they’re delighted. A typical response is, “Sounds like fun!”

My beat is focused on wildlife and the outdoors. And in this world of fierce contention, over seemingly everything, it sounds downright peachy.

This is plenty of joy and wonder in the work. I’ve reported on the rehabilitation of a fuzzy baby sea otter by a surrogate mom and the resurgence of a rare songbird along the L.A. River.

However, there is also plenty of strife, messy politics and difficult decisions. (My inbox reflects the high emotion. I get hate and love mail, just like other reporters.)

Take a saga I’ve been writing about for more than a year concerning a plan by federal wildlife officials to shoot up to nearly half a million barred owls over three decades to save spotted owls in California, Washington and Oregon. Even someone who knows nothing about the matter can guess it’s controversial.

Since the strategy was approved last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, animal rights groups have fought to stop it, gaining traction with some U.S. lawmakers. Bipartisan legislators signed onto letters urging the Trump administration to cancel it, citing costs they said could top $1 billion. Then, this summer, Republicans in the House and Senate introduced resolutions that, if successful, would overturn the plan for good.

It was a nightmare scenario for environmental nonprofits, which acknowledge the moral quandary involved with killing so many animals, but say the barred owl population must be kept in check to prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl, which is being muscled out of its native territory by its larger, more aggressive cousin. They also dispute that ten-figure price tag.

Then, at the eleventh hour, there was an upset in alliances. Logging advocates said canceling the plan could hinder timber sales in Oregon, and threaten production goals set by the Trump administration. That’s right: Loggers were now on the same side as conservationists, while right-wing politicians were aligned with animal welfare activists. Talk about unlikely, uncomfortable political bedfellows.

The loggers’ plea may have tipped the scales. Louisiana Republican John Kennedy, who spearheaded the Senate resolution, said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — whose portfolio includes timber — personally asked him to abandon the effort. Kennedy, in colorful terms, declined to back down. He called the planned cull “DEI for owls” and said Burgum “loves it like the devil loves sin.” The resolution didn’t pass, splitting the Republican vote almost down the middle.

You don’t have to go to Washington, D.C., to find epic battles over wildlife management.

In California, there’s been much discussion in recent years about the best way to live alongside large predators such as mountain lions and wolves.

Wolves in California were wiped out by people about a century ago, and they started to recolonize the state only 14 years ago. The native species’ resurgence is celebrated by conservationists but derided by many ranchers who say the animals are hurting their bottom line when they eat their cattle.

State wildlife officials recently euthanized four gray wolves in the northern part of the state that were responsible for 70 livestock losses in less than six months, my colleague Clara Harter reported, marking the latest flashpoint in the effort to manage them.

“Wolves are one of the state’s most iconic species and coexistence is our collective future,” said Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “But that comes with tremendous responsibility and sometimes hard decisions.”

Even hulking herbivores such as wild horses stir passionate disagreement.

In the Eastern Sierra last month, I walked among dozens of multi-colored equines with members of local Native American tribes, who told me of their deep connection to the animals — and their heartbreak over U.S. government plans to send them away.

Federal officials say the herd has surged to more than three times what the landscape can support, and pose a safety hazard on highways, while also damaging Mono Lake’s unique geologic formations. Under a plan approved earlier this year, hundreds are slated to be rounded up and removed.

A coalition that includes local tribes — which have cultural ties to the animals that go back generations — disputes many of these claims and argues that the removal plan is inhumane.

“I wish I had a magic wand and could solve it all,” Beth Pratt, of the National Wildlife Federation, told me after my article on the horses was published.

Stay tuned. I’ll be writing this newsletter about once a month to dig into important wildlife stories in the Golden State and beyond. Send me feedback, tips and cute cat photos at [email protected].

More recent wildlife news

Speaking of wolves: The Trump administration ordered Colorado to stop importing gray wolves from Canada as part of the state’s efforts to restore the predators, a shift that could hinder plans for more reintroductions this winter, according to the Associated Press’ Mead Gruver. The state has been releasing wolves west of the Continental Divide since 2023.

More than 17,000 acres of ancestral lands were returned to the Tule River Indian Tribe, which will allow for the reintroduction of Tule elk and the protection of habitat for California condors, among other conservation projects, my colleague Jessica Garrison reports.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called it “the largest ancestral land return in the history of the region and a major step in addressing historical wrongs against California Native American tribes.”

One year after the discovery of golden mussels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, dense colonies cling to boats and piers, threatening water for cities and farms — and there’s no help on the way, reports CalMatters’ Rachel Becker. State agencies have prioritized protecting other areas in the state from the infested Delta, the hub of the state’s water supply.

Will traditional holiday fare such as crab cakes be on the menu this year? As fellow Times reporter Susanne Rust writes, the need to protect humpback whales in California’s coastal waters, combined with widespread domoic acid contamination along the northern coast, has once again put the brakes on the Dungeness crab commercial fishery and parts of the recreational fishery this fall.

A few last things in climate news

My colleague Ian James wrote about a big shift in where L.A. will get its water: The city will double the size of a project to transform wastewater into purified drinking water, producing enough for 500,000 people. The recycled water will allow L.A. to stop taking water from creeks that feed Mono Lake, promising to resolve a long-running environmental conflict.

California’s proposed Zone Zero regulations, which would force homeowners to create an ember-resistant area around their houses, have stirred backlash. One provision causing consternation may require the removal of healthy plants from within five feet of their homes, which some say isn’t backed by science. Those in favor of the rules say they’re key to protecting dwellings from wildfires. Now, as The Times’ Noah Haggerty explains, state officials appear poised to miss a Dec. 31 deadline to finalize the regulations.

Clean energy stocks have surged 50% this year, significantly outpacing broader market gains despite Trump administration policies targeting the sector, Bloomberg reports. Demand for renewable power to fuel artificial intelligence data centers and China’s aggressive clean-tech expansion are driving the rally.

Park rangers furloughed by the federal shutdown are teaching preschoolers and elementary school students about nature, earning some extra income, my colleague Jenny Gold reports.

One more thing

If you’re not quite ready to let go of the Halloween mood, I have good news. November generally marks the end of tarantula mating season. As I reported, male tarantulas strike out every year from their burrows in search of a lover. Finding one can be fatal, whether she’s in the mood or not. Females are known to snack on their suitors. Gulp.

While the arachnids inhabit areas such as the Angeles National Forest and Santa Monica Mountains year-round, mating season — when the males are on the move — offers the best opportunity to spot one. Through the month of November, you can also gaze at them at the Natural History Museum’s spider pavilion.

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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.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lila_seidman on X.

In recent years, it’s become abundantly clear this region’s war on smog hinges on the adoption electric vehicles. And, for the first time in a generation, we may be headed in the wrong direction.

If you’ve followed my coverage, you probably know that Southern California’s persistently sunny climate and mountains work together to form and trap smog over our region. And, that the leading source of smog-forming pollution is the same today as it was decades ago: gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

State regulators have made tremendous progress in the last few decades when it comes to curbing tailpipe pollution; California, for example, was the first state to adopt engine emission standards and mandate catalytic converters, regulations that were later adopted nationwide. But Southern California has yet to achieve any federal air quality standards for smog.

And now, electric vehicles and hybrids face significant headwinds due to recent policy changes under the Trump administration.

Since President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has successfully campaigned to invalidate several California auto emission standards, including a landmark rule that would’ve required 35% of new vehicles that automakers supply to California car dealerships to be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid starting next year.

Separately, Trump’s budget bill terminated federal incentives at the end of September that made zero-emission vehicles more cost-competitive with gas cars. As I recently wrote, California saw record-high sales numbers of EVs and other clean vehicles as consumers scrambled to dealerships to take advantage of expiring deals.

But now, without these two crucial policy levers driving EV adoption, the industry is at an inflection point.

A new EV costs about $8,000 more on average than a gas car, according to Kelley Blue Book.

The overall cost of ownership for EVs can still be cheaper than for gas cars due to lower fuel and maintenance costs. However, the question is, will Americans accept a higher upfront price tag in exchange for fewer costs — and less pollution — down the road?

The auto industry doesn’t pivot on a dime. Car lineups are designed, produced and released years in advance. But, in the last year, amid a torrent of policy decisions coming from the Trump White House, car companies have announced many moves that signal a retreat from some zero-emission vehicles:

• Acura discontinued its electric ZDX after just releasing one model year.
• Ford scrapped its forthcoming all-electric three-row SUV program.
• General Motors discontinued the Brightdrop van, an electric delivery van.
• Ram pivoted from releasing an all-electric pickup truck to a plug-in hybrid model.
• Stellantis shelved its hydrogen fuel cell program for commercial vans.
• Volkswagen canceled the release of its ID.7 sedan in North America.

The loss of new or forthcoming zero-emission models is disheartening, said Joel Levin, executive director of Plug In America, a nonprofit that hosts events to advocate for more EVs. But, he added, most of these were fledgling models that did not make up a large share of sales.

“I think it’s that people are just being more selective about what they’re bringing to market, and are focusing in on the vehicles that they really feel like have legs,” Levin said. “So it’s a loss. I’m sad about it. But I don’t think that it’s an existential threat to the market.”

In the last decade, Levin has seen the national market share of EVs and plug-in hybrids compared with overall car sales grow from a fraction of a percent in 2015 to roughly 10% in 2024. In California, that number was even higher, at 25%.

Levin said that can largely be attributed to advancement of battery technology, which has allowed for drastically longer range. But EVs also offer technological amenities that gas counterparts do not.

“Ford has advertised how you can use your pickup truck as backup power for your house if the power goes out,” Levin said. “Or if you’re a contractor or rancher and you need to use power tools somewhere remote away from your house, you can just plug them into your truck. If you’re camping, you can set up your electric kitchen, or you can watch movies, or you can charge your equipment.”

Those features may help win over some drivers. But experts say government regulations are necessary to achieve California’s air quality and climate targets.

California is suing the federal government and Trump administration, alleging they illegally overturned the state’s auto emission standards. The state Air Resources Board has also proposed several ideas to boost EV sales, such as providing free access to toll roads to EV and hybrid drivers.

That said, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently ruled out one of the most powerful tools at his disposal to promote a clean fleet of vehicles in California, as he reneged on his commitment to restore a state rebate program for EV buyers that he had previously vowed to put into effect if Trump eliminated federal incentives.

Dan Sperling, a former CARB board member and UC Davis professor, said the state might consider a “feebate” program in which the state could impose fees on the sales of the most polluting cars, which would then be used to fund rebates for EV and hybrid purchases.

Meanwhile, as consumer sentiment and government policies vacillate in the U.S., demand internationally continues to grow. And American automakers will need to keep investing in EVs if they want to stay globally competitive. Sperling, who took my call while traveling to Paris, said he noticed Chinese EVs throughout the city.

“In China, 50% of all their vehicles that they sell are electric vehicles,” Sperling said. “They sell more electric vehicles in China than total cars sold in the U.S.”

“The vehicle industry is an international industry and so they can’t afford to just give up on electric vehicles, because that means they’re giving up on the rest of the world.”

Air news this week

Ten years after the disastrous Aliso Canyon gas leak, my colleague Hayley Smith spoke with residents about their recollections of the dangerous release of some 120,000 tons of methane and other toxic chemicals near Porter Ranch. Despite persistent environmental concerns, regulators have voted to keep the gas storage facility online, citing concerns over energy demand.

A judge ordered a Watts recycling facility to permanently shut down and pay $2 million in restitution and fines after the company and its owners pleaded no contest to illegally dumping hazardous waste that was polluting a nearby high school.

Environmental groups recently sued the Trump administration for lifting restrictions on dozens of chemical manufacturing plants, according to InsideClimate News reporter Keerti Gopal.

LAist’s AirTalk host Larry Mantle hosted a great conversation on how Los Angeles became the nation’s smog capital. He and Chip Jacobs, the author of “Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles,” recounted the region’s first brush with toxic haze in the 1940s and pollution’s lasting legacy in Southern California.

Associated Press reporters Sheikh Saaliq and Sibi Arasu reported that officials in India are undertaking cloud-seeding experiments as a way to clear air pollution in New Delhi. The controversial approach involves using aircraft to spray chemicals into clouds above the city in hopes of triggering rainfall that would suppress the smog.

One more thing in climate news …

Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest hurricanes recorded to date in the Atlantic, killed more than 20 people as it barreled through Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba, according to the Washington Post. The proliferation of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels undoubtedly contributed to the historically powerful storm. Because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and foster more intense storms, Melissa may be a harbinger of what’s to come.

Making matters worse, Bloomberg reporters Leslie Kaufman and Fabiano Maisonnave report that wealthy countries are not giving poorer nations the climate adaptation funding they need, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme. As climate risks in many of these countries increase, funding to adapt to climate change is shrinking.

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.

For more air quality and climate news, follow Tony Briscoe at @_tonybriscoe on X.

How democratic is your water utility?

Does everyone who is registered to vote get to choose their leaders in elections? Or do only property owners get to vote for the managers? Maybe the public has no say at all in selecting the people who make decisions that determine safe and affordable drinking water?

“We see significant differences based on democracy,” said Kristin Dobbin, a researcher at UC Berkeley. “It really does influence the outcomes of a water system.”

In a new study she led, it turns out that water utilities where all voters have a say in choosing leaders tend to perform better.

I contacted Dobbin to learn more about what she and her colleagues discovered about what they call “water democracy” in California.

The researchers analyzed nearly all of the state’s residential water suppliers, more than 2,400 of them. They looked at three categories: those where all registered voters can elect board members; those where only property owners can; and those where people have no vote in choosing decision-makers. Fully 25% of the systems fall into this last category.

In 2012, California became the first state in the nation to declare access to clean, accessible and affordable drinking water a human right. The researchers wanted to see how these different types of utilities have fared in achieving that.

They already knew more than 700,000 Californians rely on water systems that are failing to meet drinking water standards, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, and an additional 1.8 million have systems considered “at risk” of failing.

The study, published this month in the journal Nature Water, found that 13% of water utilities with limited voting rights are identified as “failing,” similar to those where customers can’t vote on leaders. For fully democratic water systems, only 9% fall into that category.

Fully democratic water purveyors, which tend to be larger, also have significantly fewer cases of E. coli contamination from sewage leaks or agricultural runoff.

Those with the most cases of bacterial contamination are water utilities with no elected boards that are run by companies or mobile home parks. These serve many low-income communities and tend to serve more African Americans.

“We find very clearly that low-income communities of color are less likely to have water democracy than others,” Dobbin said.

The group of for-profit utilities led by unelected managers is also more likely to rely on a single source of water rather than diversifying, which Dobbin said puts them more at risk of an emergency if a well goes dry or tests reveal contamination.

Growing numbers of Californians are also struggling to afford the rising costs of their water bills. And on affordability, the group that performs the worst is utilities that allow only property owners, not all registered voters, to vote. The researchers found the utilities with the most democracy perform much better in delivering affordable water.

One caveat: Another recent study, led by UC Davis professor Samuel Sandoval Solis, examined who is leading nearly 700 public water agencies in California, and found that Latinos, as well as Black and Indigenous people, remain significantly underrepresented on their boards, as do women.

Here’s a look at other news about water, the environment and climate change this week:

Water news this week

I wrote about how tribes are urging Los Angeles to pump less groundwater in the Owens Valley. In addition to siphoning water from streams into its aqueduct, the Department of Water and Power says the city has 96 wells it can use to pump groundwater. Indigenous leaders told me the pumping has dried up springs and meadows. DWP says the water is used locally for purposes including controlling dust on the dry bed of Owens Lake, and that the city is taking steps to ensure protection of the environment.

Meanwhile, in a unanimous vote, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers water for 19 million people, chose the agency’s new general manager: Shivaji Deshmukh, who leads the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. His appointment comes nearly nine months after the board fired general manager Adel Hagekhalil after an investigation into allegations of discrimination that exposed divisions within the agency.

Up north along the California-Oregon border, one year after the last of four dams was dismantled on the Klamath River, tribes and environmentalists say the river and its salmon are starting to rebound. Damon Goodman, regional director of the group California Trout, says shortly after the dams were removed, “the fish returned in greater numbers than I expected and maybe anyone expected,” Debra Utacia Krol reports in the Arizona Republic. Oregon Public Broadcasting also reports that Chinook salmon have returned to southern Oregon for the first time in more than a century.

In a new report, researchers say President Trump’s proposed budget would slash funding for federal programs aimed at bringing clean drinking water to Native communities by about $500 million, a nearly 70% decrease. The researchers, part of an initiative called Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities, said the proposal would reverse “hard-won progress toward clean, reliable water supplies for Native communities,” and they’re urging Congress to reject the cuts.

More climate and environment news

California hasn’t issued an emergency plea for the public to conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022. As my L.A. Times colleague Hayley Smith reports, much of the credit for that goes to new battery energy storage, which has grown more than 3,000% since 2020.

The Trump administration plans to further cut staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Inside Climate News’ Katie Surma reports that the Interior Department plans to slash about 2,000 positions affecting national parks, endangered species and research. The plan surfaced in a court case after a judge temporarily blocked the administration from cutting staff during the government shutdown.

Earlier this year, my colleague Grace Toohey wrote about problems in Ventura County during the Thomas fire of 2017 and the Mountain fire of 2024, when firefighters saw hydrants run dry and found themselves short of water. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) introduced legislation requiring Ventura County water suppliers to take various steps to try to prevent that, including having 24 hours of backup power to pump water for firefighting. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, which Bennett says is “implementing the lessons learned” from the fires.

One other thing

My former colleague Sammy Roth recently left the L.A. Times and has started his own newsletter about climate and culture called Climate-Colored Goggles. His first edition just came out, focusing on how Toyota has tarnished its green reputation so much that some of Hollywood’s leading environmentalists no longer want to be associated with it. Sammy writes that the Environmental Media Assn., Hollywood’s leading sustainability group, appears poised to cut ties with Toyota, its sponsor.

Sammy’s piece is, as usual, hard-hitting and insightful. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to follow and subscribe to his work.

Boiling Point, which Sammy helmed so brilliantly, will be back with a new installment next week from another member of our Climate and Environment team.

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.

For more water and climate news, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

At last month’s meeting of the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force in Redlands, Director Patrick Wright remembered the group’s early days: “Candidly, when I started this job, we got an earful from Southern California.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom created the task force in 2021 and at the time, Southern California’s wildfire experts told Wright that he and other state leaders “didn’t understand Southern California was different. Its vegetation is different. Its fire risk is different.”

It’s true — the coastal chaparral native to much of Southern California is entirely different from the mixed-conifer forests of the Sierra.

More than a century of humans attempting to suppress nearly every fire meant the low-intensity burns that northern forests relied on every 5 to 20 years to promote regeneration no longer came through to clear the understory. As trees and shrubs grew in, they fueled high-intensity fires that decimated both the forest and communities.

Meanwhile in Southern California, as humans settled into the wildlands, they lit more fires. Discarded cigarettes, sparking cars, poorly managed campfires, utility equipment and arsonists lit up hundreds or thousands of acres. Here, the native chaparral is adapted to fire coming every 30 to 130 years. The more frequent fires didn’t allow them to grow, make seeds and reproduce. Instead, what’s grown in places where chaparral used to be are flammable invasive grasses.

But when I first moved to Southern California and started covering the wildfires devastating our communities, I had only heard the northern version of the story.

The fire problem in Northern California is more widely understood. “Smokey the Bear, only you can prevent forest fires — everybody kind of knows, intuitively, what a forest fire is,” said Michael O’Connell, president and chief executive of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy — and one of the people who (respectfully) gave Wright an earful.

Meanwhile, ember-driven fires in Southern California are “like someone lobbing grenades from five miles away,” he said.

Experts in both NorCal and SoCal agree on how we ought to protect ourselves once a ferocious fire breaks out: Across the board, we need to harden our homes, create defensible space and ensure we’re ready to evacuate. But how to prevent devastating fires differs.

The forest thinning and careful reintroduction of intentional “good” fire in the Sierra don’t exactly translate to the Santa Monica Mountains, for example.

The problem here in the south is more vexing: How do we reduce the number of fires we spark?

One way is with groups like Orange County Fire Watch and Arson Watch in Topanga and Malibu, which go out on days when the wind is high and try to spot fires before they start. A new effort, celebrated by the task force, to reduce ignitions along SoCal roadways by clearing flammable vegetation is also underway.

But, while NorCal has a plethora of studies affirming the effectiveness of forest thinning and burning, there is little research yet on SoCal’s proposed solutions.

“We really do, now, understand what the problem is that we’re trying to deal with,” O’Connell said. “How do you get that done? That’s more complicated.”

And the vast majority of state funding is still geared toward northern fuel management solutions — not keeping fires from sparking. (The task force also still measures progress in acres treated, a largely meaningless metric for Southern California’s chaparral.)

Yet, O’Connell is hopeful. At the task force’s first meeting in SoCal — where Wright got an earful — leaders didn’t yet have a grasp of SoCal’s wildfire problem. Now, they’re letting SoCal’s land managers and researchers lead the way.

“If it weren’t for the task force, I think we would be in big trouble, frankly,” O’Connell said. The task force leaders “have not only understood [the problem] but have accepted it and run with that.”

Here’s the latest on wildfires

Federal firefighters are in their third week without pay, as the U.S government shutdown drags on. According to the U.S. Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting force in the country — fire response personnel will continue to work through the shutdown, although prevention work, including prescribed burns and forest thinning, will be limited.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would increase the salaries of Cal Fire firefighters to more closely match those of local fire departments. Meanwhile, efforts championed by the state to build a series of fuel breaks in the Santa Monica Mountains are underway. Some ecologists worry about the damage the fast-moving project could do to the environment; others say the state is not moving fast enough.

Last week, federal prosecutors announced the arrest of a suspect they believed intentionally started the Palisades fire on Jan. 1. The announcement has led to calls for both the Los Angeles Fire Department, responsible for putting out the Jan. 1 fire, and California State Parks, whose land the fire started on, to be held accountable.

And the latest on climate

A turning point and a tipping point: Global energy production turned a corner in the first half of the year, with renewables such as solar and wind generating more electricity than coal for the first time. And, the Earth is reaching its first climate change tipping point: Warm water coral reefs can no longer survive, according to a report published by 160 scientists.

With the 2025 state legislative session wrapped up, some important climate bills are now law. One law extends California’s cap-and-trade program — which limits how much greenhouse gas polluters can emit and enables them to trade emission allowances at auction — from 2030 to 2045. Newsom also signed a bill to make oil drilling in Kern County easier while making offshore drilling more difficult and another to push local governments to increase electrification efforts.

Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required data centers to report how much water they use. He was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements” on the centers, he wrote in a message explaining his veto, noting that “California is well positioned to support the development of this critically important digital infrastructure.”

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.

For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Five-plus years ago, during the early days of COVID-19, we sent the first edition of Boiling Point. I wrote then that there would “always be people who say it’s the wrong time to talk about carbon emissions, or water pollution, or the extinction crisis.” But even amid a deadly pandemic and stay-at-home orders, I argued, it was more important than ever to keep the climate crisis front and center.

The same is true now — yes, even amid the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on democracy and dissent and immigrants. Which is why, even though I’m leaving the L.A. Times, Boiling Point will continue.

Yes, you read that correctly. I’ve made the difficult decision to leave the L.A. Times. Tuesday was my last day.

But I’m not done telling stories about climate. And neither are my wonderful friends and colleagues.

I’m not quite ready to share my own plans yet. If you want to keep following my work, please send me an email at [email protected], and I promise to keep you updated. I’m excited for what comes next.

It’s a bittersweet moment, though. Working at The Times has been one of the great privileges of my life; thank you for inviting me into your inboxes, and making time to read my stories when you could have been scrolling or streaming. I’m grateful for our dialogue, our debates, our disagreements. I hope we’ll have many more.

Just as importantly, I hope you’ll continue to follow and support the L.A. Times, especially our environment team.

With no disrespect to any other news outlet, we have the best climate reporters in the business: Tyrone Beason. Tony Briscoe. Noah Haggerty. Ian James. Sandra McDonald. Melody Petersen. Corinne Purtill. Susanne Rust. Lila Seidman. Hayley Smith. Rosanna Xia. If you’re not reading them, you’re doing it wrong.

Starting next week, several of my colleagues will take turns writing Boiling Point. It’ll look a little different than it does now, with a combination of analysis and news roundup. Each edition will have a unique focus, based on the reporter’s expertise: Ian James will cover water, for instance, while Lila Seidman will tackle wildlife and Tony Briscoe will handle air quality. You’ll get a wide range of thoughtful perspectives.

The newsletter will still arrive in your inbox every Thursday. It’ll still be worth opening.

Just like climate, journalism is more important now than ever. Local journalism especially.

Thank you for everything. Onward.

ONE MORE THING

On the southern end of Del Mar, train tracks run precariously close to the edge of rapidly crumbling cliffs.

(John Gibbins / San Diego Union-Tribune)

For nostalgia’s sake, here are some of my favorite environmental stories and series the L.A. Times has produced during my seven years here — including, no shame, one of my own:

A reporter kept a diary of her plastic use. It was soul-crushing

Colorado River in Crisis: A Times series on the Southwest’s shrinking water lifeline

Fishing the L.A. River is more than a quarantine hobby. For some, it’s therapy

Is it ethical to have children in the face of climate change?

Repowering the West: Energy-hungry cities are reshaping the landscape, again

The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim

The L.A. Times investigation into extreme heat’s deadly toll

Uncovering the toxic soil lurking in L.A.’s burn zones

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.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

If I didn’t know better, I might have thought Intermountain Power Plant was already dead.

When I visited last month, most of the desks had been torn from the administrative building, leaving behind scattered piles of boxes and office supplies. A whiteboard featured photos of dozens of newly retired employees. Perhaps most tellingly, the coal pile in the yard out back was tiny compared with my previous visit in 2022.

“Our target is to have no coal left on the floor,” said Kevin Peng, manager of external generation for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Peng was my tour guide at this hulking coal-fired power plant in central Utah, over 500 miles from the city it has powered for the last 40 years. And no, it wasn’t dead yet. One of two massive steam turbines, a General Electric unit installed in 1986, was still sending small amounts of electricity to L.A. and several other Southern California cities following a required air quality test. Soon Unit 1 would shut off, probably for the final time.

Unit 2 would carry Intermountain through its final act. At the moment it was slowly preparing to generate power, releasing puffy white steam through a small vertical pipe near the main smokestack. I stood on the roof for a few minutes near the pipe, letting water droplets fall gently on my face and reporter’s notebook.

“We create our own rain,” Peng with a smile.

Come November, the rain will cease. Same goes for the planet-warming carbon emissions. Los Angeles is closing Intermountain, a watershed moment that will mark the end of coal power in California.

The 710-foot smokestack towers over the rest of Intermountain Power Plant.

(Niki Chan Wylie / For The Times)

To hear President Trump tell it, coal is needed for economic prosperity. Just this week, his administration said it would open 13 million acres of public land to coal mining and offer $625 million in handouts to coal plant owners.

Trump & Co. — including Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fossil fuel executive, who insisted the handouts “will be vital to keeping electricity prices low and the lights on without interruption” — are battling the free market. Coal plants generated 16.2% of U.S. electricity in 2023, down from 48.5% in 2007. The main culprit? Competition from cheaper solar, wind and natural gas.

In California, just 2.2% of electricity came from coal in 2024 — nearly all of it from Intermountain. Over 60% was generated by solar panels, wind turbines and other climate-friendly sources that don’t fuel deadly wildfires, heat waves and floods. Thanks to a surge in lithium-ion batteries, there have been no power shortages since 2020.

The L.A. Department of Water and Power, meanwhile, has been making big investments in low-cost renewables, including a record-cheap solar-plus-storage plant that opened this summer. DWP has fired up Intermountain less and less, relying on the plant for 21% of the city’s power in 2019 and just 10% in 2023.

Jason Rondou, the utility’s assistant general manager for power planning and operations, said the coal plant has supplied affordable, reliable electricity for decades. But now there are better options.

“It’s come at a pretty significant external cost — the cost of the carbon emissions,” he said. “For us to move beyond that and move to a cleaner, innovative technology, I think is very exciting.”

Indeed, Los Angeles isn’t just closing Intermountain. It’s built a first-of-its-kind power plant across the street.

The new turbines are designed to burn a mix of 70% natural gas and 30% hydrogen. Although gas is a fossil fuel that exacerbates global warming, hydrogen isn’t. That mix alone is unique for a plant of this scale. But over time, as technology improves, DWP plans to transition to 100% hydrogen — an unprecedented undertaking.

The newly built gas/hydrogen power plant known as IPP Renewed, seen from the roof of the Intermountain coal plant.

(Niki Chan Wylie / For The Times)

Even better, the hydrogen will be “green,” meaning it’s made from renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels.

At times of day when DWP has extra renewable power — such as mild spring afternoons, when the sun is shining and Angelenos aren’t blasting their air conditioners — the utility can use that energy to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. DWP and its partners have hired a private company to store the hydrogen in giant underground salt caverns just down the road from Intermountain.

Then, when DWP needs extra power — during a heat wave months later, for instance — it can pull hydrogen from the caverns and fire up the turbines. Basically, the hydrogen will function like a long-term battery.

“It’s very different from lithium-ion [batteries],” Rondou said. “For that seasonal storage, that’s where hydrogen can really provide significant benefit.”

Among environmentalists, hydrogen is controversial. Some share DWP’s view that it’s a necessary piece of the clean energy puzzle. Others consider it a distraction from cheaper, more proven technologies, and a threat to air quality, especially in low-income communities of color. They’ve slammed DWP’s goal of eventually converting four L.A.-area gas plants to hydrogen, citing nitrogen oxide pollution and potential methane leaks.

In Utah’s Millard County, conservative local officials have embraced the newfangled technology, along with solar and wind. Unlike Trump, who has slashed hydrogen funding, they have little aversion to clean energy.

“Energy development is really important in our portfolio. And we will talk to everybody. We’re open for business,” said County Commissioner Bill Wright.

Sitting in his living room, as dogs and grandkids wandered past, Wright reflected on his rural county’s long relationship with Los Angeles. The massive tax revenues, the hundreds of jobs. The lack of local control. The fact that nearly all the power goes to California.

Wright would have liked to see DWP keep the coal plant running. But the closure has been in the works for years, so he and his neighbors have had time to adjust. He’s glad L.A. isn’t leaving town entirely — even though the new plant will be smaller, with fewer jobs and a smaller tax base.

“Absolutely, this is a better solution,” he said.

Millard County Commissioner Bill Wright poses for a portrait near Intermountain Power Plant outside Delta, Utah, on Sept. 16.

(Niki Chan Wylie / For The Times)

Wright is hopeful that the Utah Legislature will find a buyer for the coal plant, possibly a data center. One of his colleagues on the county commission, Vicki Lyman, is less optimistic. She’s worked at Intermountain for a dozen years and sees major technical and economic hurdles to restarting a mothballed power plant.

“I’m kind of excited just to see how all this technology’s going to work out,” Lyman said.

It’s still not entirely clear when DWP will start combusting hydrogen. The new plant will burn 100% gas when the coal turbines power off in November, utility officials say, because there won’t be enough hydrogen banked in the salt caverns yet. DWP is targeting the second quarter of 2026 to mix in 30% hydrogen.

For employees, DWP has tried to make the transition as painless as possible. It’s limited layoffs by not replacing retiring staffers, and by offering tuition reimbursement to anyone who chooses to go back to school.

Still, change can be bittersweet. While touring Intermountain, I bumped into plant manager Jon Finlinson, who’s worked there since 1983 and would have retired already if the gas/hydrogen units weren’t running a few months behind schedule. He professed excitement for the new facility. But when I asked him how he’d commemorate the final day of coal combustion, he offered the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “We don’t have a plan for that yet.”

Really? After 40 years, nothing?

“It’ll be a sad day for all the people that have worked here for their whole life,” he acknowledged.

Intermountain staff member Carl Watson offers a peek into the coal furnace.

(Niki Chan Wylie / For The Times)

Technically, even after Intermountain stops sending coal power to L.A. — as well as Anaheim, Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and Riverside — there will still be tiny amounts of coal in California’s energy mix. A Riverside County electric cooperative imports coal from out of state, as does Berkshire Hathaway-owned Pacific Power in Northern California. In San Bernardino County, two small coal plants fuel a mining operation.

Together, those coal generators supplied less than 0.2% of the state’s electricity in 2024. (If you want to get really technical, an additional 1.5% came from “unspecified” out-of-state sources, most likely gas and coal.)

But why quibble when there’s cause for celebration? Change is never easy; no solution is perfect; there will always be caveats.

Next month, California is quitting coal. Raise a glass.

The coal pile at Intermountain Power Plant, seen on Sept. 17.

(Niki Chan Wylie / For The Times)

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.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Correction: Last week’s edition of this newsletter referred to Revolution Wind as a floating offshore wind farm. The project’s turbines are attached directly to the sea floor.

For nearly a decade, President Trump has promised “energy dominance” — a vague but alluring slogan hinting at a world in which the U.S. is king. A world in which other nations depend on us for their power, ensuring economic prosperity in the form of domestic jobs, cheap gasoline and low electric bills.

The problem is, it’s a breathtaking lie.

As recent events have made abundantly clear, Trump and his allies don’t care about energy dominance. They care about killing renewable energy and helping fossil fuel companies profit. Even if it means higher power costs. Even if it means destroying American jobs. Even if it means ceding the future to China.

All of which is happening. “Energy dominance” is a terrifyingly effective propaganda campaign that demands a robust response from the renewable energy industry, which, like the Democratic Party, has largely failed to meet the moment. Solar and wind companies have instead let Trump’s messaging rule the day, pushing back weakly at best as they scramble for slices of an “energy dominance” pie that will never be theirs.

It’s time for them to start punching back.

Amid a yearlong assault on clean power — including Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed federal incentives for solar farms, wind turbines and electric cars — nothing has better exemplified the MAGA Republican Party’s stance toward renewables than an unprecedented, possibly illegal effort to block several massive clean energy projects, including at least one already under construction.

Last month, the Trump administration ordered the Danish company Orsted to stop building Revolution Wind, a $4-billion floating wind farm in the waters off the Rhode Island coast that was already 80% complete. A judge ruled Monday that work can proceed — a win for New Englanders, who stand to pay half a billion dollars per year in higher utility bills and face a higher risk of blackouts if the project doesn’t come online.

Also last month, Trump’s Interior Secretary Doug Burgum reversed the Biden administration’s approval of an Idaho wind project, Lava Ridge. Earlier, he halted construction of Empire Wind off the New York coast, changing course only after Gov. Kathy Hochul reportedly agreed to approve two gas pipelines. Burgum’s agency asked judges last week to cancel approval of offshore wind farms in Maryland and Massachusetts.

Trump’s hatred for wind turbines dates back to his failed effort in the mid-2010s to derail an offshore wind farm that he said would ruin the views from his Scottish golf resort. But he and his accomplices have attacked the solar industry, too.

A worker helps build the Gemini solar project on federal lands outside Las Vegas in January 2023, during the Biden administration.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Trump’s appointees have issued directives making it harder for solar and wind companies to qualify for tax credits before they expire, and stalling approvals for renewable energy projects on public and private lands. The U.S. Department of Agriculture gutted a program that provides financial support for farmers who want to lower their energy bills by installing solar panels.

“The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” Trump wrote on social media in August.

If climate-friendly energy is stupid, then America’s biggest energy companies are pretty dumb. Solar panels, wind turbines and batteries made up 94% of the nation’s new power capacity last year — a trend driven by the fact that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of new electricity. Even in Texas, renewables are booming.

So how have Trump and friends justified their attacks on clean energy?

In large part by lying.

In that August social media post, Trump claimed that states reliant on wind and solar power “are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS.”

That’s false. Although Californians do pay high electric rates for complex reasons, states with similarly climate-friendly power supplies — such as wind-rich Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota — enjoy some of the country’s cheapest electricity.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, meanwhile, said in a recent interview that in the absence of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines are essentially “worthless” when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing — rehashing a tired anti-renewables talking point that deliberately ignores the incredible growth of energy storage, driven by rapidly falling battery costs.

Wright — who previously ran a fossil fuel company — is also engaged in the latest climate-denial fad: acknowledging that global warming is real but insisting the consequences aren’t so bad, and that phasing out oil and gas is actually more harmful than replacing them with clean energy. Never mind the bigger wildfires, the harsher droughts, the deadlier heat waves, the rising seas, the deadly air pollution…

To support his lies, Wright handpicked five infamously contrarian researchers who produced a report questioning decades of well-established climate science. Dozens of leading experts quickly uncovered errors.

“The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating,” Wright said in a written statement alongside the report. “Yet we are told — relentlessly — that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat.”

Oil, gas and coal did indeed help build today’s society. And now we know they pose an existential threat to society if we keep using them for too much longer.

This shouldn’t be a hard story for renewable energy companies to tell. One European power generator, at least, is doing it well.

Some of the Hywind Tampen floating offshore wind turbines in the North Sea, operated by Equinor, an international energy company based in Norway.

(Ole Jørgen Bratland / Equinor)

In a recent ad for Swedish energy company Vattenfall, actor Samuel L. Jackson stands on a bluff at the edge of a gorgeous sea. He looks out across the water, where wind turbines spin serenely in the distance.

“Mother— wind farms. Loud, ugly, harmful to nature. Who says that?” Jackson asks, shaking his head. “These giants are standing tall against fossil fuels. Rising out of the ocean like a middle finger to CO2.”

The tagline: “We’re working for fossil freedom.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find such punchy, provocative messaging from the U.S. clean energy industry.

When the Trump administration said last month it was making it harder for solar and wind projects to qualify for federal tax credits, for instance, Abigail Ross Hopper — president of the Solar Energy Industries Assn. — urged the Trump administration to “stop the political games, stop punishing businesses, and get serious about how to actually build the power we need right now to meet demand and stay competitive.”

Similarly, when federal officials halted work on Revolution Wind, American Clean Power Assn. Chief Executive Jason Grumet called it “a broken promise to the communities, workers, consumers, and businesses counting on this project.”

“Taking jobs away from American families while raising their energy bills is not leadership,” Grumet said.

Underlying both missives — and the industry’s entire playbook, so far as I’ve seen — is the assumption that clean energy companies are dealing with a normal, good-faith government. That Trump and company aren’t just trying to own the libs and line the pockets of campaign fundraisers. That they truly care about “energy dominance.”

It’s time for solar and wind executives to stop pleading with MAGA Republicans and start telling Americans the real story. That clean energy is cheaper, healthier and just as reliable as fossil fuels. That China is dominating the renewable energy arms race, and we badly need to catch up. That we don’t need coal, and we won’t always need oil and gas, and “energy dominance” is a lie meant to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

That strategy probably won’t pay off in the short term. But in the long term, nothing else will.

The California Supreme Court sided with environmental groups in a Thursday ruling, saying that state lawyers were wrong in their claim that the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to slash rooftop solar incentives could not be challenged.

The unanimous decision sends the case brought by the three groups back to the appeals court.

The groups argue the utilities commission violated state law in 2022 when it cut the value of the credits that panel owners receive for sending their unused power to the electric grid by as much as 80%. The rules apply to Californians installing the panels after April 14, 2023.

The Supreme Court justices said the appeals court erred in January 2024 when it ruled against the environmental groups. In that decision, the appeals court said that courts must defer to how the commission interpreted the law because it had more expertise in utility matters.

“This deferential standard of review leaves no basis for faulting the Commission’s work,” the appeals court had concluded then in its opinion.

The environmental groups argued the appeals court ignored a 1998 law that said the commission’s decisions should be held to the same standard of court review as those by other state agencies.

“The California Supreme Court has ruled in our favor that the CPUC is not above the law,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president at the Environmental Working Group, after Thursday’s decision was published. The other groups filing the case are the Center for Biological Diversity and The Protect Our Communities Foundation.

The utilities commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling.

More than 2 million solar systems sit on the roofs of homes, businesses and schools in California — more than any other state. Environmentalists say that number must increase if the state is to meet its goal, set by a 2018 law, of using only carbon-free energy by 2045.

The utilities commission has said that the credits given to the rooftop panel owners on their electric bill have become so valuable that they were resulting in “a cost shift” of billions of dollars to those who do not own the panels. This has raised electric bills, especially hurting low-income electric customers, the commission says.

The credits for energy sent by the rooftop systems to the grid had been valued at the retail rate for electricity, which has risen fast as the commission has voted in recent years to approve rate increases the utilities have requested.

The state’s three big for-profit electric utilities — Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric — have sided with commission in the case.

The utilities have long complained that electric bills have been rising because owners of the rooftop solar panels are not paying their fair share of the fixed costs required to maintain the electric grid.

For decades, the utilities have worked to reduce the energy credits aimed at incentivizing Californians to invest in the solar panel systems. The rooftop systems have cut into the utilities’ sale of electricity.