Confession time: Until last month, I hadn’t read “Abundance.”

The 2025 book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson has divided progressives with its provocative argument that environmental regulations are stifling climate progress — and undermining support for Democrats — by impeding construction of solar farms, wind turbines and dense new housing. After a year of hearing people argue about it, I got sick of not fully understanding what all the fuss was about.

At the risk of annoying absolutely everybody, here’s my lukewarm take: I think Klein and Thompson make some very good points! I’m also not convinced their ideas would single-handedly solve the climate crisis, as the internet’s most vocal “abundance bros” would have you believe.

I’m glad I read the book, and I appreciate that Gavin Newsom and other high-profile Democrats are taking it seriously. I also understand why critics are so frustrated by its insistence that environmental regulations are, in many cases, bad for the environment. It’s already hard enough defending those regulations against polluting industries and the Trump administration; now some progressives are piling on, too?

Having written extensively about the need to balance building clean energy projects with protecting wildlife habitat, I figured I’d have mixed feelings about “Abundance.” No surprises on that front.

Nonetheless, the book defied my expectations.

While discussing homelessness in L.A., for instance, Klein and Thompson quote an affordable housing consultant who raises a surprising obstacle to building affordable housing: Projects near freeway are required to have higher-quality air ventilation.

“All the affordable housing development is subject to green building requirements,” says Yasmin Tong, founder of CTY Housing. “The standards in California are higher than anywhere else in the country.”

“You’re not just required to build to the standard, you also need to hire a consultant to confirm you’ve built to the standard,” she adds. “That adds costs.”

Her comments prompt Klein and Thompson to ask whether requiring higher-quality air filtration near freeways makes sense, “when the alternative, for many of the would-be residents, is a tent beneath the freeway.”

“To pose the question sounds callous,” they write. “But to refuse to pose the question, given the need for more housing, is cruel.”

The first time I read this, I recoiled a bit: Of course homes near freeways should have top-notch filtration. Air pollution near highways is terrible. People living near highways are more prone to asthma, heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer.

But the more I dwelled on it, the more I wondered. I thought about all the trade-offs between renewable energy development and habitat conservation. Was this a similar trade-off? Do we live in a world where trying to solve every environmental and public health problem means failing to solve most of them, including the biggest one of all?

According to “Abundance,” the answer is “yes.” The book catalogs how liberals have slowed down badly needed infrastructure projects — high-speed rail, solar and wind farms, apartment buildings near public transit — by bogging them down with far too many costs and requirements. Good costs and requirements, as it happens: prevailing wages for workers, diverse hiring rules, detailed environmental reports, regular audits to ensure taxpayer funds aren’t being wasted, and many more.

Taken individually, those are all good and important things. But collectively, they can result in never-ending boondoggles like California’s bullet train.

Blue cities and states “too often add too many goals to a single project,” Klein and Thompson write. “A government that tries to accomplish too much all at once often ends up accomplishing nothing at all.”

So what’s the solution?

Based on the fiery discourse around “Abundance,” I feared the book would call for a total unwinding of foundational environmental laws. Fortunately, it doesn’t. Klein and Thompson recommend permitting reform only for climate-friendly energy, instead of an “all of the above” approach that benefits oil and gas.

Bigger picture, they acknowledge the trade-offs inherent to environmental policy.

“It is not always clear how to strike the right balance,” they write. “But a balance that does not allow us to meet our climate goals has to be the wrong one.”

On the whole, the book felt a lot more nuanced than much of the small-a “abundance” rhetoric I’ve encountered online.

Last week, for instance, pundit Matt Yglesias published, “The case for clean energy abundance,” in which he berated climate activists for promoting energy conservation (seriously!) and described true abundance as “a desire to create so much electricity that nobody’s bothering to conserve.”

For Yglesias, environmentalists are the enemy. He castigates green groups constantly, convinced that if only environmental crusaders would shut up about keeping oil in the ground, “normal” Americans would be more likely to vote for Democrats.

If you’ve mainly heard about “abundance” from abundance bros like Yglesias, I can understand why it might sound awful! The internet has a fascinating way of making basically anything toxic. We should all read more books.

We should also resist the temptation to believe in climate silver bullets.

For all the things I think “Abundance” gets right, it mostly ignores the villains of the climate story: fossil fuel companies, automakers, plastic manufacturers, Big Ag — the folk fighting like hell to keep cooking the planet. They will keep fighting like hell, and thanks to America’s dysfunctional democratic institutions, they will probably succeed — even if Democrats make it easier to build clean energy.

Eventually, economics will kill off the dirty industries — but not nearly soon enough to avoid some truly scary warming. Building clean energy won’t vanquish the climate crisis, at least not on its own; Democrats need to confront the root causes, too.

“Abundance” has another major flaw: It largely ignores rooftop solar (and really any clean energy solution that isn’t large-scale infrastructure). Which is a shame, because rooftop solar is super popular and increasingly affordable, and also has the benefit of not destroying wildlife habitat. But Klein and Thompson don’t seem interested.

So if you’re not an “Abundance” fan: Yeah, I sympathize. It’s frustrating that the most influential climate book in recent times leaves so much to be desired.

But also: If you haven’t read it yet, maybe give it a shot. Like I said earlier, it defied my expectations — in part because most of the book had nothing to do with energy.

Klein and Thompson make the case that government can be a powerful force for good in American life — an idea rarely articulated anymore by Democrats. They call for far more investment in medical research and basic science, and a greater appetite for risk-taking with taxpayer funds. (No risk, no reward.) They note that the moon mission was wildly unpopular throughout the 1960s. But President Kennedy pursued it anyway.

“Leaders define what counts as a crisis,” Klein and Thompson write. “And leaders are the ones who choose to focus.”

With courageous political leadership, they suggest, the U.S. could choose to make the climate crisis a national priority. It’s a stirring call to action for the next Congress and president: Don’t just read the polls. Learn the science, consult the experts and do what needs to be done.

What needs to be done, then? “Abundance” offers a reasonable starting point, but it’s far from a comprehensive guide. Let’s all read some more books.

Subscribe now

Share

‘An Inconvenient Truth’ turns 20

I was 13 years old when “An Inconvenient Truth” came out; I asked my parents to drop me off at the movie theater. I don’t remember what inspired me to want to see it, or how exactly I felt afterward. But I know the film made an impression on me: deadly heat waves, worsening storms, rising seas, melting glaciers. My eyes were opened.

And not just mine. Al Gore’s scientifically grounded presentation of global warming as an urgent threat helped define a generation of American climate discourse, teeing up U.S. support for the Paris Agreement and the eventual passage of President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Even amid fossil fuel industry resistance and the Republican Party’s burgeoning hostility, climate advocates kept winning.

They didn’t stop global temperature increases from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious target. But with 1.5 degrees front of mind, they bent the emissions curve downward, helping avoid worst-case scenarios for humanity. They did so by building a political movement around ideas articulated in Gore’s film: that global warming is a crisis; that certain temperature thresholds should be avoided; and that translating science into policy is paramount.

“We have everything we need, save perhaps political will,” Gore said in the movie.

“An Inconvenient Truth” — which was released 20 years ago this Sunday — can feel like a relic today, when the U.S. is led by MAGA grifters and even many progressives have decided climate action is a losing political message. In California and New York, governors are softening existing clean energy commitments and declining to fight for new ones. Elsewhere, even saying the words “climate change” is increasingly frowned upon for elected officials. “Climate hushing” is all the rage.

But you know what? Not talking about a problem doesn’t make it go away.

Just ask Gore. Two decades later, the science he presented in “An Inconvenient Truth” looks pretty darn accurate. And his film definitely made an impact.

No single documentary could have such a big influence today; the media landscape is too fractured, our attention spans too short, the nation’s politics too polarized.

But if enough people with enough influence spent enough time talking about climate science, they’d make a difference.

In other news

Climate backsliding:

• California regulators are poised to weaken a crucial climate program next week, undermining the state’s ability to achieve its 2030 emissions reduction goal. (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)

• Gavin Newsom keeps trying to kill America’s biggest virtual power plant. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

• New York Governor Kathy Hochul persuaded legislators to roll back key elements of the state’s emissions reduction law. (Jon Campbell, Gothamist)

On our public lands:

• The Senate confirmed Steve Pearce, a former member of Congress from New Mexico, to lead the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He has previous argued that “we do not even need” most federal lands. (Chris D’Angelo, Public Domain)

• President Trump’s destructive border wall is militarizing the southern end of the Continental Divide Trail. (Alicia Inez Guzmán, High Country News)

• Climate change and habitat destruction are killing Joshua trees. Hidden networks of underground fungi could help them survive. (Alex Wigglesworth, L.A. Times)

The energy transition:

• Nineteen new wind turbines will produce as much electricity as 400 old turbines in California’s Altamont Pass. The U.S. could more than double its onshore wind capacity with no new land via “repowering.” (Justin Gerdes, Quitting Carbon)

• Berkeley is reducing emissions by requiring home sellers to make green upgrades such as heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. (Todd Woody, Bloomberg)

• “I believe data centers, the only place that they exist, is in hell.” A tiny California city is drafting a five-year moratorium on data centers. (Philip Salata, inewsource)

Around the world:

• As Trump’s war in Iran sends oil and gas prices soaring, Europeans are investing in rooftop solar, EVs and electric heat pumps. (Eshe Nelson, New York Times)

• Costa Ricans are flocking to low-cost Chinese-made EVs to avoid paying high oil prices. (Jack Ewing, New York Times)

• This summer’s FIFA World Cup, with 104 matches across North America, will be the most polluting soccer tournament ever. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

Last but not least, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been driving around the country with his wife and nine kids for a reality TV show funded by companies he regulates, including Toyota, Boeing, Shell, United Airlines and Comcast, per the Wall Street Journal’s Andrew Tangel and Sharon Terlep. Just another insane scandal.

Share

Until next week

Big Solar is still trying its darnedest to win over the Trump administration.

The Solar Energy Industries Association announced this week that it had hired Tim Pawlenty, the Republican former governor of Minnesota, as its president and CEO. In a press release, he called the sun “the safest, most natural, and largest nuclear reactor in the world” — a technically accurate but nonetheless curious description. It’s almost like the solar industry is straining credulity to market itself to folks who love “natural” solutions and nuclear power.

Look, it would be amazing if the Trump administration started approving solar farms on public lands. But every time it seems like President Trump’s appointees might ease up on clean energy, they attack with renewed vigor.

As I’ve written previously, I think the solar industry desperately needs a new strategy. Begging a bunch of oil industry shills to be nice to them isn’t working.

But solar executives seem to feel otherwise, and I’d love to know why. So I’ve asked for an interview with Pawlenty. Here’s hoping I have a Q&A to share with you soon.

Big Oil wants Xavier Becerra

When I wrote last week about the California governor’s race, I mentioned that one of the leading Democrats — Xavier Becerra, the state’s former attorney general — took a $39,200 campaign contribution, the maximum allowed, from oil giant Chevron.

Some folks responded that $39,200 didn’t seem like an especially large number. Would that kind of money really influence Becerra?

Well, more news on that front: On Wednesday, California Resources Corporation — the state’s largest oil driller, with operations in Los Angeles County, Ventura County and across the Central Valley — reported that it had given $500,000 to an independent expenditure committee supporting Becerra.

RL Miller, founder of political action committee Climate Hawks Vote, tipped me off to the half-million-dollar contribution.

“I think Big Oil is choosing its governor,” she said. “They are indicating very clearly which side they’re on.”

Miller remembers delivering a petition with 70,000 signatures to Becerra’s office in Los Angeles in 2017, urging the attorney general to investigate Exxon Mobil’s history of hiding the truth about global warming — a history that had recently been exposed by investigations in the L.A. Times and Inside Climate News. Becerra never launched an investigation. His successor, Rob Bonta, eventually sued Exxon and other fossil fuel companies over what his office called a “decades-long campaign of deception.”

Becerra spokesperson Jonathan Underland declined to comment on the support from California Resources Corporation, noting via email that the campaign has “no control or influence” over independent expenditures.

Control or not, Miller fears Becerra would be a friend to Big Oil.

“They have chosen Becerra as the person who will do their bidding,” she said.

Crunch time on the Colorado

In February, I wrote a New York Times guest essay bemoaning the Colorado River’s dwindling reservoirs, and criticizing the river’s Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — for failing to agree to mandatory water cutbacks.

Three months later, the problem persists.

The Upper Basin states still won’t promise to use less water. Instead, they’re calling for “immediate mediation” to stop Lake Mead and Lake Powell from crashing, as the Salt Lake Tribune’s Brooke Larsen reports.

Meanwhile, the Lower Basin states just keep promising to use less water. This month, California, Arizona and Nevada said they’d be willing to conserve 3.2 million acre-feet through 2028, the L.A. Times’ Ian James reports.

As negotiations drag on, the hydrology gets worse. Powell is set to receive just 13% of its normal spring runoff, per the Colorado Sun’s Shannon Mullane.

One leading expert believes the states need to reduce Colorado River water use by 3 to 4 million acre-feet per year — one-fourth or more of their total consumption.

“That can only happen if there are mandatory, enforceable reductions in every state,” Anne Castle, a senior fellow at the University of Colorado Law School, told the L.A. Times. “It’s just not possible … without all seven states.”

The Trump administration is getting sick of waiting for the states to work things out. It’s thinking about imposing mandatory cuts in the next few months and reevaluating them every two years, according to the Arizona Republic’s Brandon Loomis.

That would be fraught, to say the least. Think about midterm congressional elections, then imagine stressing out just as often about your drinking water.

Probably we’ll stress out no matter what — climate crisis and all. But on the Colorado, consensus is better than conflict. I don’t want to live in “The Water Knife.”

Today is my third straight day with original reporting and commentary. Like most of my work, this piece is free to read. But if you can afford to pay, I hope you’ll help me keep going.

Subscribe now

When Disneyland officials promised to convert the kid-friendly Autopia attraction from noxious gas engines to electric vehicles, they didn’t mention that California air pollution regulators were breathing down their necks.

“As the industry moves toward alternative fuel sources, we have developed a roadmap to electrify this attraction,” a Disney spokesperson told me at the time.

Turns out there was a lot more happening behind the scenes.

In March 2024, I started asking Disney why Autopia was still running on fossil fuels, forcing Disney-lovers like me to breathe putrid, cough-inducing fumes. Especially in the park’s Tomorrowland section, it made no sense.

Lo and behold, Disney took action. Seemingly in response to my questions — and to prodding by climate activists — the company committed to shutting down the ride by October 2026 and eventually reopening it with a fleet of EVs.

A huge victory for clean energy. And yet, as I learned last week, not the whole story.

A month before I started pestering Disney, the California Air Resources Board sent the company a “notice of violation” alleging that Autopia’s gasoline engines were out of compliance with air quality rules. Disney couldn’t have been surprised. According to the notice, Disney had voluntarily disclosed five months earlier that the engines — which were manufactured by Honda — weren’t properly certified.

The notice indicated that Disney would have a chance to resolve the alleged violation via settlement — which is exactly what happened.

In August 2024, Disney finalized a settlement, agreeing to pay a $56,250 penalty. The deal included a compliance plan.

“As part of the compliance plan, they agreed to go electric,” California Air Resources Board spokesperson Lindsay Buckley told me last week.

So Disney isn’t electrifying Autopia simply because it’s the right thing to do?

Well, it depends on how you look at it.

“They made the decision to go electric without much [pressure] from us,” Buckley told me. “They could have chosen gasoline or a fuel alternative, but they didn’t.”

As I wrote in the first edition of Climate-Colored Goggles, I think it’s incredibly cool that for millions of kids who visit Disneyland, their first experience driving a car will come behind the wheel of an electric vehicle. This is the kind of fundamental cultural change that can transform politics and policy, given enough time.

The fact that I helped persuade Disney to switch from gas-guzzlers to EVs — or so I thought — was one of the things that prompted me to start a newsletter about climate and culture. So it’s a little surreal to realize now that the sequence of events was more complicated than I understood.

I might have been none the wiser except for a recent article in the Orange County Register, which reported that Disney would retire Autopia’s gas-powered engines in early 2027 — a few months later that originally promised. The article also described the changes as part of “an agreement with the California Air Resources Board.”

That was news to me, so I asked the Air Resources Board for a copy of the agreement. The agreement mentioned a notice of violation, so I asked to see that too.

Reading the documents, it was hard to figure out whether the Honda-manufactured engines emit excess air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides. The Air Resources Board couldn’t help me, saying its hands were tied by the legal settlement.

As best I can tell, the legal problem is that the engines were modified, which brought them out of compliance with their 2014 certification.

But who did the modifying — Disney or Honda? It’s not clear, although the notice of violation says Disney “manufactured go-carts with the uncertified engines.”

Disney didn’t respond to any of my questions. Citing Disneyland officials, the Orange County Register reported that the $56,250 penalty was “the result of an administrative oversight that was promptly corrected with no impact to the environment.”

A Honda spokesperson also declined my request to explain what went wrong.

There’s a lot we don’t know. This much is clear, though: Disney’s decision to electrify Autopia wasn’t just an act of corporate goodwill. It probably wouldn’t have happened without government regulation, which continues to matter a hell of a lot.

And it may not have happened without a handful of climate activists who submitted air quality complaints about Autopia to state and local officials in late 2022 and early 2023. There’s no way of knowing for sure, but I wonder if those complaints prompted regulators to check in with Disney, leading the company to discover the engine issue and report it to the authorities.

One of the activists was Zan Dubin, and she’s OK with not knowing whether it was activism, journalism or regulation — or some combination — that persuaded Disney to make the right decision. To her, the lesson is the same: Take a stand.

“When you see something, do something,” she said.

And now, she can be happy that EVs are coming to the Happiest Place on Earth.

“This isn't just the upgrade of a historic Disneyland attraction,” she said. “It’s the resounding endorsement — heard around the globe — of the urgent need for clean transportation by one of the world’s most beloved brands.”

She couldn’t help adding: “This should save Disney a whole bundle on gas, too.”

Share

Today, I’m publishing an interview with Nithya Raman, one of the candidates to replace Bass. My story includes an exclusive first look at Raman’s climate plan.

You can support my reporting and commentary with a paid subscription. Thank you.

Subscribe now

When Nithya Raman announced that she would break with her ally Karen Bass and challenge the incumbent Democrat for Los Angeles mayor, I was delighted.

Having covered Bass’ environmental policies, I felt ready for a change. The leader of America’s second-largest city isn’t exactly a climate laggard — she’s kept in place the ambitious goals set by her predecessor, Eric Garcetti, including 100% clean power and 70% locally sourced water by 2035. But she’s hardly bursting with climate enthusiasm, either. She’s done little to advance a long-simmering effort to phase out neighborhood oil drilling amid industry opposition. She suspended an all-electric building rule after the Palisades fire. When L.A. faced a budget crisis, she proposed saving a few hundred thousand dollars by axing the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office.

Raman, by comparison, has spent her time on City Council advancing cleaner air and better urban planning. She wrote a policy banning most gas appliances in new homes and businesses. She served on the board of the regional air quality regulator — at least until Bass quietly removed her. Unlike Bass and many of her colleagues, she didn’t try to block a state law designed to help developers build more apartments near bus stops and train stations.

So I was pleased when Raman got in the race.

At the same time, I was surprised to see some progressive factions snub her, or even coalesce around Bass. Were they annoyed that Raman waited until the last minute to declare her candidacy? Were they unwilling to buck an L.A. Democratic machine that has long discouraged challengers from rocking the boat? Or were they displeased that Raman had arguably strayed from her democratic socialist roots?

I’m not a close enough observer of L.A. politics to answer those questions.

But if you’re a climate voter deciding what to do in the June 2 primary, I’m confident in saying that Raman is a better choice than the incumbent — especially now that I’ve talked wither her about her climate plan, which was released today.

To hear Raman tell it, global warming is an air quality issue, a public safety issue and a quality-of-life issue. Her preferred solutions include electric appliances, electric cars and electric trains, as well as more parks, more trees and more shade structures at bus stops. She also wants a moratorium on new large-scale data centers.

“I think for many Angelenos, [climate] isn’t just an abstract value,” Raman said in an interview. “But really it is something that is playing out in their daily lives.”

Before going into more detail, I should note that Bass released a Climate Action Plan last month too.

In some ways, the 93-page plan — which is an official city document, not a product of Bass’ reelection campaign — is impressive. It showcases 52 “Green New Deal” climate targets spanning energy, water, air quality, transportation and parks.

But although some of the targets are new, many have been on the books for years. The most ambitious goals were established by Garcetti.

“Largely it’s just a reiteration,” said Greg Pierce, the senior director of UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation.

Notably, the plan says nothing about the role of L.A.’s chief heat officer, Marta Segura — not surprising, given that shortly after it was released, Segura was quietly fired, as I reported Monday. The plan is also silent on the city’s climate emergency office, which Segura led. The office is now down to one staffer, even though City Council refused to go along with Bass’ plan to eliminate it entirely.

Subscribe now

Under Garcetti, the fact that Los Angeles was one of just three U.S. cities or counties with a chief heat officer was a point of pride for City Hall. No longer, it seems.

“My impression is that [Bass] is not that interested in the environment, and never has been,” said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Her sustainability plan just seems flat.”

Raman’s plan, which is posted on her website, didn’t knock my socks off. It’s relatively brief and at times light on detail; it also arrived late in the campaign. If you’re looking for a truly climate-first candidate, you may come away disappointed. Raman is no Tom Steyer.

But broadly speaking, her plan hits the right notes, especially in combination with her transportation and street safety platform. She’s certainly better than Bass.

A few reasons why.

Raman’s plan is explicit: The city should adopt state building codes that incentivize new homes and businesses to be all-electric. Unfortunately, the gas ban that Raman wrote a few years ago was repealed due to a court decision banning such policies. But there are other tools for encouraging builders to avoid gas hookups, and Raman wants to use them.

She also wants to accelerate efforts to end oil extraction within city limits — another policy that City Council already passed once but was forced to repeal due to a lawsuit. Just like ditching gas appliances, ending oil drilling would result in cleaner air — and hopefully lower rates of asthma and illnesses such as cancer.

Bass generally supports those ideas, too. But Raman believes the mayor has had plenty of time — and she’s right. Our lungs can’t wait. The climate crisis can’t wait.

The last few years, “what may be missing is political urgency,” Raman said.

During the Garcetti administration, she added, “environmental goals were central to the future of Los Angeles.”

“I don’t think you would say that today. The mayor waited nearly four years to release a climate strategy,” Raman said.

Share

Raman said she’d prioritize climate when making appointments to agencies such as Metro, the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. I was especially glad she mentioned the water district, or “Met,” which supplies a big chunk of L.A.’s water. I’ve covered Met extensively, and I’ve always been flabbergasted by Bass’ apparent lack of focus on the agency, given the precarity of L.A.’s water supply amid historic, climate-fueled drought.

“These are all places where climate goals can be pushed,” Raman said. “There has not been a concerted push to achieve strategic climate goals for the city, and I think that’s very palpable.”

One bright spot for Bass is the Department of Water and Power, where staffers have been working feverishly to reach 100% clean energy by 2035. Until recently, they were led by one of the mayor’s best hires, Janisse Quiñones.

Unfortunately, Quiñones stepped down in March, lured back home to Puerto Rico by an offer to run the company that operates the island’s power grid. I’ll be fascinated to see who Bass hires as DWP’s next general manager.

Same goes for chief heat officer. After I reported Monday that Segura had been fired, a Bass spokesperson sent me a statement assuring me the job would be filled.

“Extreme heat is one of Los Angeles’s most dangerous climate hazards, and it will only become more severe without urgent action,” the statement read. “We are in the final stages of appointing a dynamic new Chief Heat Officer, and we are excited for them to advance Mayor Bass’ Climate Action Plan, including developing the City’s first Heat Action and Resilience Plan, expanding L.A.’s tree canopy in our most heat-vulnerable communities, and implementing functional cooling strategies citywide.”

“We thank Marta for her service,” the statement added.

Better than nothing. Still no comment on whether all the open positions at the climate emergency office will be filled, though.

“I do want to give [Bass] credit for continuing the clean energy and clean water goals, especially in the Trump era. I do think she’s been dealt a difficult hand with the fires,” UCLA’s Pierce said. “But I don’t think we’ve really moved the needle forward.”

Raman isn’t perfect. But when the other top-polling candidates are Bass and Spencer Pratt — a MAGA-aligned former reality TV star — this should be an easy decision for climate voters. Keep Bass under 50% and help Raman, not Pratt, advance to the runoff.

You probably already received your ballot in the mail. Make sure to vote by June 2, for this election and all the other ones.

See you tomorrow

Yes, I’ll be back again tomorrow with another scoop. Three days in a row!

If you value my work and can afford to help me keep doing it, I hope you’ll consider a paid subscription. Thank you again.

Subscribe now

Want to help me keep doing it? Then please pay for a subscription, if you can.

Subscribe now

This time last year, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called for eliminating the city’s climate emergency office. Even for Bass — who had never prioritized climate action — the money-saving proposal was stunning, coming not long after the climate-fueled devastation of the Palisades fire.

Fortunately, City Council said “no” amid a public outcry. Crisis averted.

Or so it seemed.

Several sources tell me that Marta Segura — who led the climate emergency office since its inception in 2021 and also served as L.A.’s chief heat officer — was quietly fired by the Bass administration last month, with no replacement.

Meanwhile, the city hasn’t been hiring to fill a growing list of vacancies at the climate office. With Segura gone, there’s just one staffer left, down from six.

The mayor’s office didn’t announce Segura’s firing. Word trickled out among activists and City Council members over the last couple of weeks.

For Maro Kakoussian, director of climate and health programs at Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, Bass has been a frustrating mayor — quick to waive clean energy rules, slow to end neighborhood oil drilling. Dumping the city’s first-ever chief heat officer was merely the latest disappointment.

“There’s no transparency with how these decisions are being made,” Kakoussian said. “As we’re getting ready for another extreme heat season — and these mega-events like the World Cup — none of it makes sense.”

Indeed, I’ve long struggled to understand Bass. The first time I spoke with her, when she was running for mayor in 2022, she downplayed the risks of heat, saying that older folks dying in their homes has “historically been a problem in Chicago” but not in Los Angeles. Fact check: Extremely false!

Share

Hopefully Bass has learned better; she’s certainly spent the last four years saying all the right things about heat and climate. When I asked last year why she was trying to eliminate the climate emergency office, for instance, a spokesperson assured me that climate “will continue as a core responsibility of every department.”

In other words, who needs a dedicated climate office when City Planning and Public Works can prioritize climate initiatives internally?

Problem is, climate tends to get lost when it’s not your main job. Hence the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which is charged by City Council with coordinating between agencies and marshaling resources in advance of heat waves, with a special eye toward protecting the most vulnerable. That includes the elderly, folks who can’t afford air conditioning and homeless individuals.

The climate office has also worked on longer-term efforts to cool the city, including tree-planting and adding shade structures at bus stops.

Bass is “effectively ensuring that Los Angeles remains a city that only reacts to catastrophes rather than one that actively prevents them,” said Andy Shrader, who served as an environmental adviser to Paul Koretz, the former City Councilmember responsible for creating the climate emergency office.

“Mayor Bass is committing a strategic blunder of historic proportions,” he added.

Will Bass replace Segura, or replenish the staff of the climate emergency office? I have no idea. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to my request for comment. (SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF STORY)

I did get a chance to talk with City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who’s challenging Bass in a fiercely contested mayoral primary. We were chatting for a different story — check your inboxes tomorrow! — but I made sure to ask her about Segura’s firing.

Raman told me she was disappointed by the news, and by what she described as Bass underutilizing the chief heat officer.

“It’s an important role, and [it] had the potential to be much more than just a symbolic nod to one of the most challenging issues related to climate,” she said.

If she were mayor, she added, she would think about the role “much more expansively.”

Meaning what?

“Thinking about that person as someone who could lead and anchor a strategy around shade across the entire city, who could plan before the Olympics to push that agenda forward, who could really engage with the Public Works department to ensure that shade and structures and shelters and trees could be built, and were being built,” she said. “That’s the kind of ambitious work that someone in that role could be doing.”

Ballots have already been mailed to Angelenos. If you care about climate, should you vote for Raman over Bass?

That’s a great question. Check back for another email from me tomorrow!

UPDATE, 5/11/26: After publication of this story, I received the following written statement from Bass’ office:

“Extreme heat is one of Los Angeles’s most dangerous climate hazards, and it will only become more severe without urgent action. We are in the final stages of appointing a dynamic new Chief Heat Officer, and we are excited for them to advance Mayor Bass’ Climate Action Plan, including developing the City’s first Heat Action and Resilience Plan, expanding L.A.’s tree canopy in our most heat-vulnerable communities, and implementing functional cooling strategies citywide. We thank Marta for her service as the City’s inaugural Chief Heat Officer.”

Another endorsement for Steyer

Remember last week, when I made the case that Tom Steyer is the obvious choice for California governor, at least if you’re a climate voter?

A quick update: Since then, the Sierra Club endorsed Steyer, adding to the long list of environmental organizations supporting the billionaire activist.

Meanwhile, environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben wrote an opinion piece calling out gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra for declining to investigate Exxon Mobil — despite public pressure to do so — when he was California attorney general.

Share

In other news

The energy transition:

• California’s first solar-over-canal project is a success. It’s small, though, totaling less than one-third of a mile. (John Holland, Fresno Bee)

• California regulators won’t let SoCalGas charge ratepayers $266 million to plan a sprawling hydrogen pipeline network, which likely would have cost billions more to build. (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)

• Colorado just became the third state to legalize balcony solar. Virginia will almost certainly be next. (Sam Brasch, CPR News)

Public lands and wildlife:

• San Diego Gas & Electric wants to build a sprawling transmission line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. (Tammy Murga, KPBS)

• The Trump administration is evicting hundreds of bison from federal grasslands in Montana to benefit cattle ranchers. (Jack Healy, New York Times)

• AI deepfake scammers are coming for cute animal videos. The stupidity is — well, it’s deeply stupid. (Lila Seidman, L.A. Times)

Various villains:

• Ahead of the World Cup, Saudi Aramco — the world’s biggest climate polluter — is spending an estimated $400 million to sponsor FIFA. (Hayley Smith, L.A. Times)

• The conservative intelligentsia is running seminars to try to convince judges not to believe climate science. (Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica)

• California is investigating an energy company that agreed to take a payout from the Trump administration to cancel an offshore wind farm. (Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press)

Climate infrastructure:

• Los Angeles finally opened a subway line beneath Wilshire Boulevard. Here’s why it took 65 years. (Jenny Jarvie, L.A. Times)

• Californians will vote in November on whether to limit environmental reviews for renewable energy projects. (Paul Rogers, Bay Area News Group)

• Please join me in booing the Democrats in various states who want to cut energy efficiency funding to reduce electric bills. It would save a little money in the short term but cost everyone more in the long run. (Sarah Shemkus, Canary Media)

Last but not least, happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough! Legend.

Until tomorrow

Remember when I wrote about Jackie Robinson Day, environmental injustice, fossil fuel barons and the lasting legacy of segregation?

With ballots being mailed this week, and less than a month until primary day, lots of Californians are still deciding who they’d like to see replace Gavin Newsom.

If you’re trying to choose between the two leading Democrats, here’s my advice.

One of them is endorsed by Jane Fonda, Bill McKibben and Rebecca Solnit, as well as EnviroVoters and the political arms of the Center for Biological Diversity, the Climate Center, Third Act, NRDC and Climate Action California.

The other one took a $39,200 check from Chevron to fund his campaign. He defended the money by insisting that Chevron is “not the bad guy.”

The first wrote a book about the clean energy revolution. He’s now being bombarded by Pacific Gas & Electric-funded attack ads.

The second has taken a dim view of rooftop solar. He suggested he’d make it a priority to “go after” solar installers “who are out there to swindle families.”

The first candidate is billionaire investor Tom Steyer. The second is Xavier Becerra, California’s former attorney general.

I’ve followed the race closely — I moderated a climate forum with the top candidates — and to my mind, this is an easy choice.

I would expect Becerra, if he wins, to handle climate much the same as Newsom has the last few years: keen to defend California’s existing accomplishments but not eager to take bold new steps. At least not if they involve politically costly confrontation with utility companies or the fossil fuel industry.

Steyer would mark a break with the status quo. It’s plain from his track record that he wouldn’t hesitate to buck powerful interests for the sake of climate.

For context, Steyer’s transition from generic hedge fund manager to political activist has been driven by his concern over climate change. It started in 2010, when he spent $5 million leading the campaign to defeat Proposition 23, a ballot measure backed by Big Oil (including Koch Industries) that would’ve suspended California’s foundational law to reduce climate pollution. Steyer succeeded.

He went on to found NextGen Climate (now called NextGen America), a progressive advocacy group focused on youth engagement and voter registration. He spent nearly $30 million backing a ballot initiative that closed a corporate tax loophole and funded clean energy. He was the biggest individual donor to Proposition 50, which countered GOP gerrymandering, and also to Prop 56, which raised California’s tobacco tax.

Steyer spread his wealth outside California, too, spending tens of millions of dollars supporting climate candidates in Florida, Virginia, Washington and elsewhere. After a failed presidential run, he wrote the thoughtful book, “Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War.” In recent weeks, he’s talked about his climate and energy plans in lengthy podcasts with journalists David Roberts and Emily Atkin, showcasing an impressive grasp for detail and nuance.

One of Steyer’s main proposals: making it easier for people to lower their utility bills by installing rooftop solar. His whole campaign is built around a populist message of tackling California’s high cost of living by raising taxes on wealthy folks like himself and forcing corporations to play by the rules. He’s attacked the state’s biggest utilities with special vigor, promising to “break up the electric monopolies” so that PG&E and its brethren will stop stifling rooftop solar to pad their profits.

That helps explain why PG&E is spending so much money to defeat him. Along with Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, PG&E has long urged state officials to cut rooftop solar incentives. Under Newsom, they’ve succeeded. Seemingly wary of alienating the utilities — and labor unions that represent utility employees — Newsom has put politics above the climate crisis, letting his appointees cut incentives and failing to support other clean energy solutions disfavored by the utilities.

Becerra, I fear, would bring more of the same.

When I asked about rooftop solar at the climate forum, Becerra offered faint praise. First, he suggested that solar is a largely out of reach for low-income Californians — an increasingly outdated criticism — before pivoting to his desire to protect families from bad actors in the solar market. He said briefly he’d like to expand access to solar but gave zero details on how he’d do that.

When Steyer talks about “breaking up” the investor-owned utilities, he isn’t actually calling to dismantle PG&E, Edison and SDG&E. If you read the electricity plan on his website — he also has a climate plan and a gas price plan — you’ll see what he means. He wants to appoint regulators who will lower utility profit margins, limit the need to build expensive power lines and prioritize rooftop solar, batteries and microgrids.

As for Becerra? The scant “energy and utilities” page on his website frames the clean energy transition as an obstacle to affordability. He’s behind the times.

He’s also hard to trust on fossil fuel industry accountability.

Steyer has expressed strong support for a “climate superfund” bill — also known as “Make Polluters Pay” — that would hold oil and gas companies financially liable for climate damages. There are similar laws on the books in New York and Vermont. But the proposal hasn’t gone anywhere in Sacramento, partly because Newsom has shown no interest in supporting it. Steyer could change the game.

It’s much harder to know where Becerra stands. When I asked him whether polluters should pay for climate damages, he worded his reply carefully: “Yes, they will be at the table, but they will definitely have to pay their fair share.”

Yes, they will be at the table. He used that expression — “at the table” — several times during the climate forum. Charitably, he was trying to frame himself as a consensus-builder. Uncharitably, he was trying to avoid taking firm stances.

“We have to make sure that everyone is at the table, including the polluters,” he said.

So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by what he said last week when asked about Chevron giving tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign.

“It’s a free country,” he said. “Chevron — that’s the problem with politics — they’re not the bad guy. Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, my people of the state of California need Chevron.”

Rob Bonta, who succeeded Becerra as California attorney general, is currently suing Chevron (and several oil other giants) for what his office describes as a “decades-long campaign of deception” to hide the dangers of global warming.

Sounds like the bad guy to me.

The sad thing is, Becerra has a decent track record. He spent his term as California attorney general suing the Trump administration to defend the state’s environmental policies. He has a long history of elevating climate justice, including when he ran the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Biden.

But as the climate crisis worsens, and our cities keep burning, California can’t afford Newsom 2.0. We need a governor for whom accelerating the energy transition is a top priority, if not the top priority. That’s not Becerra. It’s Steyer.

For many progressive voters, the main objection to Steyer — and it’s a big one — is that he’s a billionaire, and that billionaires can’t be trusted. Buttressing that concern, Steyer’s opponents — and corporate-funded attack ads — have suggested he got rich on fossil fuels and private prisons. And therefore he’s a hypocrite for campaigning on climate action and abolishing ICE.

Personally, I don’t find the “hypocrite” argument convincing.

Farallon Capital Management, the hedge fund Steyer founded in 1986, did invest in fossil fuel projects and private prisons, most infamously an Australian coal mine and Corrections Corporation of America. But Steyer sold his stake in Farallon in 2012 and makes a compelling case that he’s a new man. While he never should have invested in private prisons, he’s apologized repeatedly. And he’s spent so much money supporting climate action that it’s difficult for me to fault him for his dirty energy mistakes.

If you’re dead set against supporting a billionaire — which, totally fair — my advice is to vote for Katie Porter, the former member of Congress.

Her climate platform isn’t nearly as detailed as Steyer’s, and she hasn’t given climate nearly as same attention that he has. But she impressed me at the climate forum with her detailed knowledge of the issues, and with her suggestion that she would shake up the California Public Utilities Commission. And like Steyer, she earned endorsements from EnviroVoters and the Climate Center Action Fund.

I really think Steyer is the best choice, though, much as I mistrust billionaires. Here’s McKibben explaining how he reached the same conclusion:

Maybe 15 years ago he called me out of the blue to pick my brains about climate stuff; as he talked on the phone, I googled him and established he was a hedge fund billionaire, a species to which I am allergic. I tried to put him off, but he politely insisted to the point where escape would have required real rudeness on my part, and so I proposed he come for a day hike in the Adirondacks, figuring that at the very least I would get some exercise out of it. A week later we were climbing Giant Mountain via Rocky Peak Ridge, one of the harder ascents in the High Peaks, and what do you know he was keeping up with me, and what do you know he was interesting and congenial. Over time we became real friends. He’s bunked in the guestroom at my house, and vice versa (his is nicer); we’ve donated to the same causes (350.org, Third Act; his checks were larger, though perhaps not as a percentage of one’s wealth).

More to the point we’ve carried on a nonstop conversation about climate change, which he rightly understood as the most important question the planet faces. Alone, I think, among major American politicians he could identify not just James Hansen, but climate scientists like Zeke Hausfather, Bob Howarth, and Mark Jacobson… He’s the real deal: he stepped away from his hedge fund because his colleagues wouldn’t divest it from fossil fuel, and he’s been working hard ever since to make progress on the energy transition. I can’t think of a more knowledgeable or committed climate champion in political life in America today.

As I mentioned up top, a bunch of environmental groups are similarly impressed. It was particularly fascinating to me that Steyer won endorsements from the Center for Biological Diversity — which prefers rooftop solar to massive solar farms and has an adversarial relationship with the big utilities — and also NRDC, which tends to favor large-scale solar (and is on relatively better terms with the utilities).

The fact that Steyer got both of these group in his camp is a big deal. I think it speaks to the fact that he’s truly a climate-first candidate, in a way that’s rare at high levels of American politics. I can’t imagine either group thinks he’s perfect. But they must have realized they couldn’t pass up the chance to elect a hard-core climate leader.

I can’t pass up the chance, either. I’ll be voting for Steyer.

If he manages to win, and he does a lousy job, you’ll read about it here. I won’t let him off the hook.

If someone else wins and does a great job, I’ll be thrilled. You’ll hear me say so.

Elections matter. But what happens after matters a hell of a lot more.

Share

This week, the conservative majority struck another blow against the Voting Rights Act. The week before last, we learned via the New York Times that Chief Justice John Roberts was so eager to stop President Obama’s clean energy regulations in 2016 that he broke with long-established precedent and created a “shadow docket.” Sometimes I wonder how we’ll ever make climate progress with such a regressive court.

But after chatting with three climate law experts as part of a special panel for Climate-Colored Goggles — video above for paid subscribers! — I feel a bit more optimistic.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s a lot to worry about.

This fall, the justices will hear a landmark oil and gas industry accountability lawsuit brought by the city and county of Boulder, Colorado. It’s one of about 30 similar cases filed by local governments against fossil fuel companies, typically seeking damages for climate disasters. Exxon Mobil and Suncor argue that Boulder’s claims are preempted by federal law. If the justices agree, the state court suits would come to an end.

Also bad: Depending on how it’s written, a ruling for the oil companies might nullify “climate superfund” laws in New York and Vermont designed to force polluters to pay for climate damages. In California, a newly elected governor hoping to pass such a law would be stopped in their tracks.

“The argument would be that state law can’t address this issue at all, that it’s really a matter of federal law,” said Michael Gerrard, founder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

The Trump administration could also ask the Supreme Court to revisit a crucial 2007 decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, that allowed the federal government to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Already, Trump’s EPA has repealed the “endangerment finding,” thereby declaring that greenhouse gases don’t endanger public health and welfare. (Fact check: False.) But if SCOTUS were to overturn Massachusetts v. EPA, it would be much harder for future presidents to change course and regulate emissions.

“Although overturning a precedent is always a dicey thing for the court to do, it is possible,” said Ann Carlson, founding director of UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. “I think that’s exactly what the administrator of the EPA is trying to accomplish.”

One legal drama I’m kicking myself for not asking my panelists about: the question of whether cities and counties can ban gas appliances in new homes and businesses.

A federal appeals court struck down Berkeley’s pioneering gas ban in 2023. But since then, lower courts in other parts of the country have ruled differently, upholding local policies requiring or incentivizing all-electric buildings. If the issue were to reach the Supreme Court, how might the justices rule?

Impossible to know for sure. But it’s hard to think climate will be top of mind.

Reading through the 2016 “shadow docket” memos — which were leaked to the New York Times, prompting me to convene the expert panel — it’s alarming to realize that the none of the justices, even the liberals, said anything about climate before voting to issue an emergency order blocking Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

That didn’t stop the conservative justices from justifying their decision by citing the alleged costs the utility industry would be forced to incur phasing out coal. Roberts in particular sounded alarmed, calling Obama’s plan “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” with costs “estimated to run as high as ~$480 billion.”

In a footnote, Roberts acknowledged that this cost estimate was “likely at the high end,” considering that it came from report commissioned by regulated industries — including coal. Still, he justified his use of the (outdated!) estimate by citing a White House statement that federal officials hoped to drive an “aggressive transformation” in the energy industry — a quote he found in a Washington Post article.

That wasn’t the only time Roberts let news coverage sway his decision-making.

In his initial memo to his fellow justices, he quoted an interview that EPA chief Gina McCarthy did with with the BBC, in which she suggested that early steps toward the Clean Power Plan’s implementation would make it more difficult for future presidents to revive the coal industry. Her comments must have really bothered Roberts, because he quoted them at even greater length in a second memo, insisting the EPA was trying to undermine the judicial branch — a claim that made little sense to Carlson.

Roberts sounded like he had “just read the newspaper and got pissed off,” she said.

“It just reeks of irresponsibility to me,” she added.

Joanne Spalding, the Sierra Club’s legal director, made another good point about the chief justice’s focus on McCarthy’s public comments.

“I just find it interesting that he was so focused on that, when he has subsequently declined to look at comments of President Trump in cases where [Trump] has much more explicit posts on social media,” Spalding said.

The Sierra Club was one of the groups litigating the Clean Power Plan case back in 2016, intervening on the EPA’s behalf to defend the clean energy rules. Spalding said she and her colleagues believed they might be able to win Roberts’ vote.

Now that she’s seen the memos?

“We were completely delusional,” she said.

To me, that’s the biggest takeaway from the shadow docket memos: John Roberts is a bigger adversary to climate regulation than anyone understood.

So how the hell did the experts leave me feeling optimistic?

Mainly by emphasizing how much we can still accomplish through local government — where most decisions will never go to the Supreme Court.

Spalding talked about the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which helped force the retirement of more coal-fired power plants during Trump’s first term than during Obama’s second term (or President Biden’s only term). That success stemmed in part from an intense focus on state-level public utility commissions.

Spalding also mentioned last month’s elections for the board of Arizona’s Salt River Project, which saw the Sierra Club help elect a slate of clean energy candidates to run the powerful electric utility — despite brushing up against fierce opposition from the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

“At the state level, there’s so many things we can do,” Spalding said.

One state that could use help? New York, previously a climate stalwart but starting to move backward under Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul.

“The state legislature and the governor are haggling over whether to weaken the state climate law. It looks like they probably will,” Gerrard said. “New York’s strong climate law was enacted because of citizen activism. We need more citizen activism.”

Carlson shared several intriguing ideas for climate action.

For one thing, California could use its “extraordinary power” under federal law to issue stricter regulations on conventional air pollution from gas-powered vehicles — regulations that are needed to clean up the noxious air being breathed by Angelenos and Central Valley residents. Basically, the state could require a transition to electric vehicles without having to worry about federal interference on climate.

She also had two suggestions for Congress — assuming Democrats take control of the House and Senate in 2026 and win the White House in 2028, still a big “if.”

First, Democrats could amend the Clean Air Act to clarify that it covers greenhouse gases, eliminating the potential for courtroom challenges. Second, they could pursue deeper reforms to the Supreme Court, such as adding a mandatory retirement age for justices, or increasing the number of justices.

Controversial? Absolutely. But to Carlson, worth considering.

“There are a lot of things that could be done,” she said. “Whether Congress has the will to do them is a whole different question.”

As usual, the fate of American democracy — and our planet’s climate — will probably hinge on elections. At the moment, that gives me hope.

Read more

I actually sent the first interview request for this story back in October, right after I launched CCG. Since then, I’ve published more than 50 newsletters — all while continuing to plug away at long-term stories like this one.

If you want to help me keep going, please consider a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

When Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde dreamed up Animal Kingdom in the early 1990s, he knew he wanted guests to learn that “animals exist in a context, and that context includes you.” Even before renowned conservationist Jane Goodall joined the project, Rohde hoped to show families that animals live in the same world as them. That their lives are interconnected.

So he designed a theme park that didn’t offer pristine presentations of nature. The premier attraction, Kilimanjaro Safaris, didn’t take place in the African wilderness. It began in a “profoundly commercial town,” Rohde said, before taking visitors through a game reserve surrounded by ranches and phosphate mines. The poaching crisis was a major plot point.

Those types of storytelling choices, Rohde believed, would put guests in the right frame of mind to appreciate Animal Kingdom’s Conservation Station — a museum-like space with a veterinary clinic that preached the importance of protecting habitat.

“It’s not predominantly an information distribution mechanism. It’s an inspiration mechanism,” Rohde told me.

Goodall, the pioneering chimp researcher who died in October at age 91, distributed plenty of information during her legendary career. She also inspired millions of people with her storytelling prowess.

One of her steadiest collaborators? The Walt Disney Company.

Goodall’s partnership with the entertainment giant began when Disney asked her to advise on animal care and habitat design for the thousands of critters it would house at Animal Kingdom in Florida. The relationship blossomed from there, with Goodall consulting on the documentary “Chimpanzee” and becoming a public ambassador for other Disneynature docs. She filmed Earth Month videos with Disney executives. The Disney Conservation Fund gave more than $7 million to her nonprofit.

Along the way, Goodall formed tight bonds with a cadre of Disney staffers — some of whom she recruited to build her last major project, “Dr. Jane’s Dream.”

“She just had such a grace to her, such a calm presence,” said Claire Martin, a Disney senior manager for biodiversity conservation, recalling her first time meeting Goodall. “She was able to inspire this sense of personal action, inspiration, hope.”

Goodall and Disney may seem like strange bedfellows — one a scientist and nature advocate who reshaped our understanding of chimp behavior, the other a corporation that simulates nature at its theme parks (with help from audio-animatronic apes). For whatever reason, the odd couple never got much press. I checked Goodall’s obituaries in a dozen major news outlets and didn’t find any references to her work with Disney.

But to me, a proud Disney nerd, this is a fascinating story: Why did Goodall agree to help out with Animal Kingdom? And what drew her back to Disney, again and again? Did she simply want the company’s money?

As I talked with several of Goodall’s colleagues, I quickly came to realize this was no financial quid pro quo. Goodall saw Disney as an ideal storytelling partner, a company with an enormous megaphone and a willingness to use it.

She also loved the people she worked with.

“Jane had close friends who she met through Disney, who then became collaborators,” said Anna Rathmann, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute USA. “She had a couple of people from Disney who she invited to be on the board of directors.”

There’s a lesson here for folks who care about confronting the climate crisis. It has to do with bridge-building, the power of narrative and the need for stories that help people make sense of the world they’re experiencing.

We’ll get there. First, let’s talk about pungent elephants.

When Rohde and his colleagues asked Goodall to consider advising them on Animal Kingdom, she’d never been to a Disney park, according to Mary Lewis, her longtime assistant. An initial meeting in Anaheim led to a second meeting at the construction site outside Orlando.

“Jane was very interested because of the large number of animals they wanted to have there,” Lewis said. “She asked a lot of questions over the ensuing months and years.”

Among her questions: Would animals have enough space to roam, and enough high-quality food? What would the veterinary facilities be like? How would aging animals be treated? They wouldn’t be forced to keep having babies, would they?

Ultimately Disney satisfied her: Animals would receive immaculate care. There would be no cages. Guests wouldn’t see every creature on the safari ride, because the animals would be roaming around freely.

“They put in incredible veterinary facilities,” Lewis said. “I remember people saying that it was probably better than an awful lot of hospitals at the time.”

She remembered Goodall was especially pleased when Disney delivered on a promise to construct a “vast great wallowing pool” for elephants, where the massive mammals could “submerge themselves and get covered in mud.”

“There’s nothing like the smell of an elephant,” Lewis insisted.

Unlike some animal rights advocates, who see all zoos as inherently wrong — PETA called for a boycott when Animal Kingdom opened — Goodall took a different stance, to hear Lewis tell it. For Goodall, there were good zoos and bad zoos. She was alarmed by global habitat loss and felt that if zoos could provide safe, healthy homes, they were a better alternative than animals being starved or hunted to extinction.

At a celebration marking Animal Kingdom’s 10th anniversary — one of many trips she made to the park — Goodall paid perhaps the ultimate compliment.

“If I was an animal out of my natural habitat, this is where I would like to be,” she said.

Something else about Animal Kingdom appealed to Goodall: She knew that “most of the young people who go there will never get to Africa or Asia or wherever else to see animals in the wild,” Lewis said. Disney World was “as near as they’re going to get.”

“I’m not saying it’s perfect by any means,” Lewis said. “But if [kids] can see an animal looking healthy and not bored, rigid and rocking itself stupid sitting on concrete with nothing to do all day, then at least they get that experience.”

Kids got a lot more as Goodall leaned into her relationship with Disney.

Most of the money the company gives to the Jane Goodall Institute benefits Roots & Shoots, an action-oriented program that helps young people organize projects such as cleaning up rivers and planting pollinator gardens — whatever they think will benefit their communities. The program operates in at least 70 countries.

“She wanted Roots & Shoots to be the antidote to apathy,” Rathmann said.

To celebrate last month’s release of “Hoppers” — a wonderful animated movie with a powerful message about protecting wildlife habitat — Disney teamed up with Roots & Shoots, encouraging teens to complete projects that support animals. Ten participants chosen by the Jane Goodall Institute won trips to Animal Kingdom.

Disney’s Martin described the grandmother character in “Hoppers” — who helps her rebellious granddaughter, Mabel, learn to appreciate the calming tranquility of nature — as “such a Jane.” Martin saw the film with a group of Roots & Shoots youth.

“The energy and enthusiasm of those young people was such a reminder of why this work is so important,” she said. “They came up and told me how they loved different characters, or that they’re Mabel, and thank you for telling this story, I feel seen.”

Rathmann described Goodall’s work with Disney “part of this broader philosophy she had of joining up with outlets that do storytelling, which Disney does so beautifully.”

“It was a very strong partnership based upon the power of story to inspire, to change minds, to entertain but also teach,” Rathmann said.

Makes sense to me. I started this newsletter because I believe media companies and other cultural power brokers play a crucial role in laying the groundwork for political progress. When I wrote a story that prompted Disneyland to commit to replacing gas-guzzlers with electric cars at Autopia, it was one of my proudest achievements. Before people demand change, they need inspiration. They need stories.

Bill Wallauer gets it. He met Goodall while volunteering with the U.S. Peace Corps in Tanzania in the late 1980s, becoming her go-to cinematographer after scaling a tree to capture the first-ever video of a wild chimpanzee giving birth.

When Disneynature made the “Chimpanzee” documentary, Wallauer was an obvious choice to operate the camera. He spent three years in Uganda securing amazing close-up footage of chimp life. It was a blockbuster, with millions spent on production.

“When the film came out, [Goodall] went to all of the openings and spoke both about the film itself and her programs,” Wallauer told me.

In typical Disney fashion, the tale blends reality and fantasy. The plot centers around Oscar, a cute young chimp whose clan is threatened by neighboring apes encroaching on their territory. Oscar’s mother is tragically killed. But his clan’s alpha male, Freddy, heroically steps in to raise him. All is well.

In truth, the “neighboring” apes filmed by Wallauer were 1,200 miles from Oscar and friends in Ivory Coast. And the leader of the villainous pack — dubbed “Scar,” like the murderous baddie in “The Lion King” — was actually a “gentle guy,” Wallauer said.

“It was a Disney film. It wasn’t a piece of scientific work,” he acknowledged.

Still, the events portrayed on screen could have happened in real life, he said. And he felt there was immense value in using the Disney megaphone to tell a story that could help millions of people, including kids, fall in love with an endangered species.

Wallauer said he’d love to make a documentary about how the climate crisis impacts chimps and their habitat. He’d just need funding — not easy to come by.

“A hard-hitting film about human behavior and climate change would be considered such a downer,” he said. “It’s the same reason that people are so hesitant to watch the news these days. It’s just so damn depressing, they don’t want to think about it.”

“As Jane said, we’re the smartest dumbest animals on the planet,” he added. “Because we’re the only animal who is destroying their own habitat.”

I hope Disney starts telling more climate stories through its films, parks, video games and other platforms. But the execution won’t be easy. As Rohde told me: “You can’t be very pedagogical.”

“That’s not what people are coming for, and they can’t budget their time that way,” he said. “They can’t budget for deep, attentive contemplation.”

“You have to give them emotional content and strong visceral tags that they can carry with them for when they do have time,” he added.

He was talking about theme parks, but I think the same point holds for other forms of entertainment. People don’t want lessons; they want to be moved.

I have to think that’s why Goodall poured so much time and energy into Disney: She realized she’d found a collection of storytellers willing and able to go to the next level, to make people feel while also giving them thoughtful material to chew on later. That’s certainly been my own experience with Disney, from films like “Hoppers” to rides like Kilimanjaro Safaris. As Rathmann told me, Goodall “was guided by instinct.”

“She could have had a relationship with any media company. But there was something that was deeper about Disney,” Rathmann said.

Maybe more than anything, Goodall liked the people. She befriended Beth Stevens, a Disney environmental executive who worked on Animal Kingdom, and Paul Baribault, a Disneynature film executive, eventually asking both to serve on her institute’s board. She grew especially close with one of Animal Kingdom’s chief planners, Rick Barongi, visiting him 10 days before she died. He wrote a beautiful tribute afterward.

Her highest-profile friend was Rohde, who is famous among Disney parks fans for his many dangling earrings, collected from around the world. (Lewis, Goodall’s assistant, called him “quite the most extraordinary man I’ve ever had the good fortune to meet.”) When Goodall first made plans for Dr. Jane’s Dream — an immersive cultural center in Tanzania that will combine art and education to showcase her scientific legacy and animal advocacy — she asked Rohde to draw up the initial sketches.

Several years later, Goodall returned to Rohde with a bigger ask: She wanted him to design the exhibits. He was retired, but he assembled a group of volunteers — mostly former Disney theme park designers, known as Imagineers.

Eventually Rohde and his team bowed out. But by the time Dr. Jane’s Dream reached construction, Goodall had grown dissatisfied with how it was shaping up. Once again, she sought Rohde’s help. They sat down last fall and decided the project had begun to incorporate too much technology. It had strayed from fine arts that could be produced locally — painting, glasswork, sculpture. They made a plan.

“And then she passed away like 10 days later,” Rohde said.

Not long after, he flew to Tanzania and spent a week with the local project team. He’s forging ahead with Dr. Jane’s Dream.

Meanwhile, the theme park he designed features a lasting tribute to his friend. When Goodall visited Animal Kingdom during construction, she climbed the park’s Tree of Life, a gorgeous 145-foot sculpture of a baobab tree featuring carvings of hundreds of animals. She commented afterward that she hadn’t seen any chimps.

Lo and behold, the Imagineers added one: David Greybeard, the first chimp Goodall observed using tools in the wild. The first chimp she bonded with.

Animal Kingdom has changed a lot since then, but environmental storytelling is still embedded in its DNA. Rohde described the “Avatar”-themed land, which he designed, as a Superfund site “where scientists and Indigenous people are working to restore an environment that’s been destroyed by irresponsible commercial behavior.”

Would Disney’s audiences embrace climate stories? Rohde thinks so.

“I travel all around the world. Everyone is thinking about climate change,” he said. “‘We’ve never seen rain like this. What happened to my crops? What happened to all my animals? What happened to all the fish I used to see here?’”

I wish I could ask Goodall what she’d like to see from Disney next. But that’s a question the next generation of Imagineers and filmmakers will have to answer.

Share

A cramped meeting room in Sacramento office building seems like a strange place to decide the fate of a wild desert landscape hundreds of miles south. But that’s where I was on Monday afternoon, sitting and watching as the California Energy Commission voted 4-0 to approve the controversial Soda Mountain solar project.

Critics said Soda Mountain would disrupt bighorn sheep migration; supporters said those fears were overblown. For more details, see my recent in-depth story.

In theory, Monday’s Energy Commission meeting gave everyone a last chance to make their case. In practice, it felt like bureaucratic performance art.

Read more

Just a reminder: Today I’m hosting a live conversation with three of the nation’s top climate lawyers. We’ll be discussing the bombshell New York Times investigation into the surprising origins of the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” — surprising because it was a product of Chief Justice John Roberts’ intense desire to stop President Obama from shutting down coal plants.

We’ll start at 12:30 p.m. PT and talk for about an hour, including an audience Q&A. I’m excited to be joined by:

• Ann Carlson, founding director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, UCLA School of Law

• Michael Gerrard, founder, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School

• Joanne Spalding, legal director, Sierra Club

This event is for paid subscribers to Climate-Colored Goggles. Scroll down for the Zoom registration link after the paywall.

If you’ve been enjoying Climate-Colored Goggles and want to join the conversation in a few hours, I hope you’ll consider supporting my work!

(If you sign up for a paid subscription right now, look for the Zoom registration link at the top of the subscriber welcome email in your inbox.)

Read more

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a startling investigation into the origins of the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” a secretive tool that the court’s conservative justices have used to grant President Trump vast executive powers.

The Times published a series of private memos from 2016 detailing how the justices first used the shadow docket not to indulge executive authority, but to restrict it — specifically, to block President Obama from regulating climate pollution. Chief Justice John Roberts was so freaked out about Obama pushing coal plants to shut down that he and his fellow conservatives broke with precedent and created a new way for the court to stop the rule before it took effect.

Roberts justified the move by describing Obama’s Clean Power Plan as “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector.”

With a high-stakes oil industry accountability lawsuit pending before the justices — and future climate laws and regulations almost certainly subject to their judgment — the whole thing makes me wonder: How worried should we be? How much is riding on the Roberts Court, and what can we learn from the newly revealed memos? Does the best path forward today look any different than it did last week?

This Friday at 12:30 p.m. PT, three fantastic legal minds will join me on Zoom to try to answer those questions. Please join us if you can, for a moderated discussion followed by an audience Q&A:

• Ann Carlson, founding director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, UCLA School of Law

• Michael Gerrard, founder, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School

• Joanne Spalding, legal director, Sierra Club

This event is for paid subscribers only. So if you’ve been enjoying Climate-Colored Goggles but waiting to make the leap, now would be a great time to start supporting my work. Registration info for the Zoom after the paywall.

(If you sign up for a paid subscription now, you’ll find the Zoom registration link at the top of the subscriber welcome email in your inbox!)

Read more

Ahead of this year’s Jackie Robinson Day — April 15, the anniversary of the Dodgers star breaking baseball’s color barrier — I finally read his autobiography, “I Never Had It Made.” He spends more of the book talking politics and racial justice than baseball. He decries the discrimination that Black people continued to face even after the fall of Jim Crow. He describes his efforts to save the Republican Party from Barry Goldwater, an early precursor to Donald Trump. He explains his disputes (and areas of agreement) with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

He also slams Major League Baseball owners for exploiting young Black men, letting them play because they’re good for business while hiring very few Black managers and executives — an opportunity gap that persists today. Robinson doesn’t mince words.

“Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying,” he writes.

Given that perspective, I doubt Robinson would have been shocked that his Dodgers and many other teams are now sponsored by oil and gas companies that spew deadly air pollution in Black neighborhoods. To quote the NAACP, on whose board Robinson served: “The life-threatening burdens placed on communities of color near oil and gas facilities are the result of systemic oppression.”

I’ve given the Dodgers a pretty hard time for accepting sponsorship dollars from oil giant Phillips 66. But the Texas Rangers are worse — and this season more than ever, the fossil fuel magnates who own the team seem determined to prove it.

The Rangers’ majority owner is Ray Davis, co-founder of Energy Transfer, the oil and gas company that operates the Dakota Access Pipeline. Players wear Energy Transfer logos on their jerseys as part of a sponsorship deal. Other members of the ownership group include Bob Simpson, who sold his fracking firm to ExxonMobil for $41 billion, and Neil Leibman, who previously ran a pipeline company.

That’s what came to mind when I learned the Rangers had installed a statue at their ballpark modeled after a law enforcement officer infamous for enforcing segregation.

Yes, this is as bad as it sounds. From the New York Times’ story last week:

In the photo that has come to define his legacy, Jay Banks is seen looking relaxed and unconcerned. The Texas Ranger leans his back against a tree, hands on his belt with his right knee bent.

The picture was taken outside Mansfield High School in 1956, amid a failed effort to desegregate. Banks led a detachment of Rangers who, at the governor’s direction, refused to allow the integration. In the background of the photograph, an effigy of a Black man hanging from a noose can be seen atop the school. Banks refused to take down the effigy.

***

The statue, which Molina said the [baseball team] acquired at no cost, had a longtime home at Dallas Love Field airport. It was removed in 2020, after Swanson’s book was published detailing the statue’s context, and amid national protests against police brutality. After years of trying to find a home for the statue — it had been in storage at Alliance Airport — and years of bickering with Swanson about his book, Molina found a willing taker in the baseball club sharing a name with the law enforcement organization.

“‘We have the Texas Ranger statue … would y’all be interested in displaying it,” Molina said, recalling his conversation with Rangers ownership last fall. “And the answer was, ‘Sure we’d love that.’”

Sure, we’d love that. Because who doesn’t love tarnishing Jackie Robinson’s legacy?

Robinson died in 1972, before climate change became a public concern. But people of color are especially vulnerable to fossil fueled heat waves, fires and floods. Which may explain why surveys have found that Black and Latino Americans are more likely to be alarmed or concerned about global warming than white Americans.

In a letter last year urging the Dodgers to stop running oil industry ads, state Senator Lena Gonzalez invoked Robinson’s legacy, arguing that the team has been a leader “on issues from banning cigarette ads to making history by signing Jackie Robinson.”

“It’s time to end our embrace of polluting fossil fuels,” she wrote.

Subscribe now

Rangers sponsor Energy Transfer is best known for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said would contaminate their water. Police responded to massive protests with violence and arrests. The NAACP featured a photo of the protests in a report called, “Fossil Fueled Foolery,” in a section about oil and gas pollution killing people of color.

President Trump ultimately ensured the pipeline’s completion. But a decade later, the fallout continues. Still fuming over the failed opposition, Energy Transfer’s executive chairman Kelcy Warren — who once said green activists should be “removed from the gene pool” — had his company sue Greenpeace, claiming the nonprofit instigated the protests. Energy Transfer persuaded a North Dakota jury to find Greenpeace liable for defamation, trespassing and conspiracy.

The jury ordered Greenpeace to pay Energy Transfer a whopping $667 million — an amount that a judge later reduced to a still-whopping $345 million. If the verdict isn’t overturned on appeal, Greenpeace’s U.S. operations could face bankruptcy.

The Texas Rangers force their players to wear advertisements for this company. The team’s majority owner, Ray Davis, used to run this company.

Now he’s gifted baseball fans a statuesque reminder that racism is alive and well. It’s little wonder that an oilman who got rich perpetuating the climate crisis — harming people of color most of all — seemingly decided there was no harm in honoring a law enforcement officer hellbent on keeping Black kids and white kids apart.

On Jackie Robinson Day, civil rights activists protested outside the Rangers’ ballpark, Globe Life Field. They urged the team to replace the statue with one of Robinson.

To me, that sounds like justice.

I’m not holding my breath for the oil barons to deliver.

In other news

Clean energy progress:

• America’s biggest renewable energy project — a 3.5-gigawatt New Mexico wind farm — has begun sending power to California. (Benjamin Storrow, E&E News)

• Can California’s Humboldt Bay become a first-of-its-kind offshore wind assembly hub? The work is already getting started at the historic logging port despite a loss of federal funding. (Hayley Smith, L.A. Times)

• California suspended a building code that encouraged electric heat pumps in new homes. Some survivors of the 2025 Los Angeles fires are building back all-electric anyway. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

Around the West:

• Federal officials revealed their short-term plan for propping up Lake Powell and (hopefully) avoiding severe water shortages among the Colorado River states. (Ian James, L.A. Times)

• It’s not just land-based temperature records that keep falling. An ocean heat wave off the coast of California is also breaking records. (Hayley Smith, L.A. Times)

• A new study finds that children living near the Salton Sea suffer from diminished lung development. (Ian James, L.A. Times)

Climate and culture:

• Filmmaker Adam McKay is paying OnlyFans models to do videos explaining solar power, oil industry climate denial and the role of banks in funding dirty energy. (Stuart Heritage, the Guardian)

• As the planet heats up, more hockey rinks are using plastic ice. Environmentally, that is not great. (Ken Belson and Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times)

• How many new data centers do we actually need, and for what? I’m glad someone is asking this question. (Kate Aronoff, the New Republic)

MAGA watch:

• The amazing federal research lab formerly called the National Renewable Energy Laboratory — yeah, Trump gave it a new name — will remove several iconic wind turbines for no clear reason. (Sam Brasch, CPR News)

• Trump’s push to build a big metal border wall through Big Bend National Park in Texas has spurred loud bipartisan pushback. (Miranda Green, Atmos)

• Turning Point USA failed spectacularly in its bid to reshape a powerful electric utility board in Arizona. Voters gave the clean energy coalition a majority on the Salt River Project board. (Laura Gersony, Arizona Republic)

Finally, Mike Grunwald has a great essay in the New York Times arguing that now is the perfect time to buy an electric car. The main takeaway: “You can save real money while doing a small part to help stabilize the climate, defund Big Oil and even reduce the risk of future conflicts in fossil-fueled nations like Iran and Venezuela.”

Until next time

I can’t keep doing this work without your support. If you enjoy my reporting and commentary, I hope you’ll upgrade to a paid subscription to help me keep it going.

Thank you.

I should start by telling you about the bighorn sheep that live in the Soda Mountains south of Interstate 15, two-thirds of the way from L.A. to Vegas, just outside Mojave National Preserve. I should describe the proposed solar project that critics say would disrupt their habitat, discouraging them from crossing over the freeway and breeding with their brethren on the other side. I should explain that state regulators will vote in just a few weeks on whether to approve the solar project.

That’s how most writers would start this story. They’d tell you how the April 27 vote will have significant repercussions for treasured public lands. They’d point out that it could set a precedent for how California navigates long-simmering tensions between renewable energy development and conservation.

I’ll get back to that stuff shortly. Promise.

First, I want to share something Chance Wilcox said to me last month as we drove up I-15, past the site of the proposed Soda Mountain solar farm.

Wilcox works for the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit advocacy group that opposes Soda Mountain. He pointed out that the sea of solar panels would be extremely visible from the highway, which prompted me to ask if that would really be so bad. Depends on who you ask, he responded.

“This highway cuts alongside Mojave Trails and Mojave National Preserve. It’s scenic, it’s beautiful, you have a lot of people coming through here,” he noted. “This is an area without billboards. This is in an area that naturally is beautiful, and I think that [solar] would definitely mar that natural beauty.”

“Even though you’re on an interstate,” he added.

Fair enough. But as we pulled off the freeway, Wilcox caught me off guard: He told me he prefers wind turbines to solar farms. Visually speaking.

“This is a personal statement, but wind turbines have a little bit more of a, what’s the word I’m looking for? Charisma, I guess,” he said.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; sure, plenty of people hate looking at wind turbines, but there’s no objective standard of beauty or ugliness. Personal experience has a lot to do with these kinds of judgments. President Trump has been vilifying wind energy ever since someone built an offshore wind farm within sight of one of his golf courses. Personally, I learned to love the big spinning turbines as a kid, when my family would drive through Palm Springs’ iconic wind farms on summer road trips.

I also think solar farms look gentle and serene, probably because I’m a climate writer. Even when I lived in the desert — weekends spent camping in Death Valley, hiking on Mt. San Jacinto and exploring less-visited places like the Wee Thump Wilderness — I loved spotting solar farms. To me, they represent a safer future.

Maybe Wilcox sees solar differently because his job involves fighting solar farms that would hurt wildlife and damage sensitive ecosystems.

“Sheep prints!” he called out, laughing with excitement as we hiked a rocky patch of desert south of the highway. I crouched to take a look. Sure enough: two small cloven hoofs, imprinted in the soil.

We’d spent all day looking for sheep without success, but this was proof. This was why Wilcox needed to block Soda Mountain.

“We don’t oppose solar,” he said. “But this is a bad site.”

He acknowledged that I must hear similar statements all the time — and he’s right, I do. Which is frustrating, because I’ve never written about a renewable energy project that someone didn’t oppose on the grounds of “this is a bad site.”

Which isn’t to say there aren’t bad sites.

But this is why I didn’t want to start with Soda Mountain: I am absolutely exhausted by the never-ending debate over whether and where to build solar in the desert. When I started writing about energy for the Desert Sun in 2014, some of my first stories were about controversial solar farms — including Soda Mountain, which was first proposed in 2007. I never imagined I’d still be writing about it in 2026.

I also never imagined I might be convinced it was a good project.

How to explain? Where to begin?

Several solar companies have tried and failed to secure approval for Soda Mountain, which would be built on federal public lands. A previous developer came close during the Obama years, winning a permit from the Interior Department before losing a 3-2 vote at the San Bernardino County supervisors. That seemed to be the end.

But in 2022, state lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 205 to help developers circumvent local opposition to solar, wind and battery projects. Instead of seeking approval from cities and counties, developers can now go to the California Energy Commission. The agency has to make a decision within nine months.

Sensing an opportunity, VC Renewables — a subsidiary of European fossil fuel giant Vitol — acquired the rotting carcass of Soda Mountain and submitted an application to the Energy Commission to build 300 megawatts of solar and 1,200 megawatt-hours of battery storage. Conservation groups were outraged. State and federal officials had spent eight years writing a 10-million-acre master plan for where to prioritize solar in the desert. The Soda Mountain site didn’t make the cut. Now state officials might fast-track solar there anyway? Just 1,500 feet from Mojave National Preserve?

It felt like a betrayal.

“When it comes to Soda Mountain Solar, we’ll continue fighting no matter what stage of the game this is in,” Wilcox said.

The fight revolves around bighorn sheep, a desert icon. When I-15 was built in the 1950s, it split the Soda Mountains in half, confining the local bighorn population to the southern part of the range. Ever since, they haven’t been able to move through a migration corridor that runs north to Death Valley National Park.

As a result, they can’t breed with other bighorn populations, limiting gene flow. That makes them more likely to die during disease outbreaks. In the long run, it also limits their ability to find safer habitats as the planet warms.

A solution is in the works.

California agencies and rail company Brightline West — which hopes to build a high-speed train through the middle of I-15 — have agreed to spend $120 million building three wildlife crossings over the freeway. One crossing would reconnect the south and north Soda Mountains, allowing bighorn sheep to reclaim lost territory, build genetic diversity and stay safe from climate change.

But independent biologists say the solar farm could discourage sheep from using the crossing, keeping them confined to the south Soda Mountains in practice. Their route to the crossing wouldn’t be blocked, but the sight of thousands of acres of solar panels could make them scared to descend from the mountains.

“They’re wary animals. They’re always weighing the benefits against the risks,” said Christina Aiello, a biologist with the Wildlands Network and a bighorn sheep expert. “When they have the option to avoid people, they will take it.”

Visiting the area, it’s clear how much humans have already altered the landscape. As Wilcox led me through the desert on foot, pointing out the knoll across I-15 where the overpass will link the north and south Soda Mountains, I watched as vehicles sped by on the freeway. Many of them were semitrucks, including an Amazon Prime big rig. A hulking electric line paralleled the other side of the highway, transmitting power from Hoover Dam to Los Angeles. We’d passed an off-road vehicle area just up I-15. Soon a high-speed train could join the fray.

No wonder Aiello is hesitant to add solar to the mix.

For sheep, “you’re adding up these scary things on top of each other,” she said.

Share

Aiello urged the Energy Commission to require a buffer of at least 0.62 miles between the solar project and the mountains — and possibly as much as 1.24 miles. At the high end, that would kill the project. At the low end, it would cut the project in half.

In theory, the five commissioners — who are appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom — could still follow Aiello’s advice. In practice, they probably won’t.

In a 1,767-page report last month, Energy Commission staff rejected Aiello’s advice. They recommended the commissioners approve Soda Mountain with a buffer of just 0.25 miles, which they described as the minimum distance that would reduce harm to bighorn sheep “to a less than significant level.”

This is where I get existential: What the hell is a “less than significant level,” and who should we trust to determine that? Is any harm acceptable?

Perhaps more importantly, how much should I care about the fate of maybe 100 bighorn sheep? Shouldn’t I be more concerned with what kind of planet I’m going to be living on when I’m 50 — not to mention what kind of planet my future children are going to be living on when they’re 50 — if we don’t build a lot more solar, a lot faster?

I asked Drew Bohan, the Energy Commission’s executive director, to explain why he’d recommended the project’s approval. He was refreshingly honest.

“Nobody’s joyful about having any impact to the bighorn sheep,” he said. “On balance, we found that the value of the project was greater than that impact.”

Bohan told me state wildlife officials suggested a quarter-mile buffer. Still, he acknowledged that “of course a larger buffer would be more protective.”

“Every project does have impacts,” he said. “Our objective, and our legal mandate, is to reduce them to less than significant.”

So what does “less than significant” mean?

“You can’t look it up in a dictionary. There’s no precise definition. You just have to make a judgment,” he said. “It’s like most every policy decision, right? There’s some element of subjectivity.”

Ain’t that the truth. Nice as it would be to confront the climate crisis without having to make tough judgment calls, the energy transition is littered with messy, subjective decision-making. Lithium mines with the potential to drive wildflowers to extinction. Nuclear plants that fuel pollution from uranium mining. Hydropower dams that block salmon migration. Wind farms that disrupt sacred tribal sites.

There are no easy answers — certainly not for solar in the desert. Much as I’d love for rooftop solar to solve all our problems, researchers have found it will never come close to replacing fossil fuels. We need to get comfortable with hard choices.

At least for me, Soda Mountain is an especially hard choice — partly because it’s been revived by a company that seems terrified of public scrutiny.

I spent three months trying to persuade VC Renewables to give me a site tour; at one point, the company’s lead consultant agreed to a phone call before backing out. Later, when I told her I’d be visiting the site with an environmental group, she said it would be best for her to join us for “safety purposes,” which made no sense because the land belongs to the public. When I asked her to meet me there on another day, she declined and requested written questions. She didn’t answer any of them by my deadline.

Suffice to say, I don’t especially like VC Renewables.

I also don’t like that Soda Mountain violates the spirit of the 10-million-acre master plan for where to put solar in the desert — although it doesn’t violate the letter of the plan. It would be built in an area zoned as “general public lands,” where clean energy isn’t streamlined but isn’t prohibited, either.

Neal Desai, another staffer at the National Parks Conservation Association, said Soda Mountain “undermines the ability for California to develop renewable energy.”

“It’s giving solar a black eye,” he said.

I agree that it stinks. In an ideal world, this project would have died years ago.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. We live on an overheating planet ravaged by fossil fueled wildfires, droughts and storms. Since graduating from college in 2014, I’ve lived through Earth’s 11 hottest years on record. I’ve watched my city burn. I’ve lost track of all the drought emergencies, the billion-dollar disasters, the doomsday headlines.

We’re not doomed. But we do need to build a staggering number of solar projects — even if we install enormous amounts of rooftop solar, which we should. To reach 100% clean power, California alone needs to quadruple its fleet of large solar farms, officials estimate, building 36 gigawatts by 2031 and another 32 gigawatts by 2045.

The alternative is to keep burning coal, oil and gas. That’s no alternative at all.

Which is why I’ve concluded the Energy Commission would be right to approve Soda Mountain. If every solar project that faced opposition got rejected, very few would get built. I’m willing to risk the possibility of confining the sheep to their isolated range if it means securing 300 megawatts of solar and storage.

I feel bad disagreeing with the National Parks Conservation Association, whose work I respect and admire. But this is a judgment call I’m making, and I’m comfortable with it. Your own values and life experiences may lead you to feel differently — in the same way they may predispose you you to feel that a solar project is beautiful, or an eyesore, or somewhere in between. Parsing the facts can only get us so far.

Which is why the desert solar debate is exhausting, by the way. Why it never ends.

Really, it never ends. Even if state officials approve Soda Mountain, that’s not the last hurdle. VC Renewables needs a buyer for the electricity, and thus far it’s given no sign it has one. It also can’t start building without a permit from the Trump administration — no friend to the solar industry.

If Soda Mountain ever does get built, I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I see it. I suspect I won’t have my usual reaction of, “Amazing, a solar farm.” More likely I’ll worry about the bighorn sheep. Maybe I’ll stop near the wildlife crossing and search for tracks.

No easy answers. Such is life in the Anthropocene.

Share

I love California, and I love Disneyland, and I see the world through climate-colored goggles. So maybe it’s inevitable that I’ve come to experience one of my favorite rides — Soarin’ Over California, a stunning aerial tour of our coasts, deserts and mountains — as a reminder of how much this great state has changed since the motion simulator ride opened a quarter-century ago.

Lifted into the air last month, I found myself sighing at the sight of the Sierra Nevada blanketed with heavy snow near Lake Tahoe, projected onto an enormous 180-degree dome screen. If only we had such abundant snow now! If only global warming weren’t making years like that one less and less likely.

I’d had the same reaction riding Soarin’ during previous periods of dismal snowpack. But this time the wistfulness cut deeper. Perhaps because a climate-fueled March heat wave had recently broken temperature records across the Western U.S., melting much of the already-meager snow and imperiling downstream water supplies.

Or maybe I felt so pensive because Soarin’ just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and 25 is the kind of number that makes you stop and reflect.

When Disney California Adventure opened in February 2001, with Soarin’ a marquee attraction, the state hadn’t suffered through any of the fires that are now its 15 largest on record. Average temperatures were several degrees cooler. Sea levels were lower.

At what point are we soaring over a fundamentally different California?

Most people aren’t thinking about climate at Disneyland (at least not yet). But for me, last month, every scene on Soarin’ called the climate crisis to mind.

Come fly with me…

The Golden Gate Bridge

Soarin’ begins at a California landmark. Although rising seas won’t topple the bridge itself, the ride’s aerial footage also features San Francisco, where low-lying areas such as the Embarcadero and Crissy Field could be inundated. More broadly, the entire Bay Area faces significant flood risks.

Seeing the Golden Gate also made me think of “The Wild Robot,” a wonderful 2024 film that takes place in a nearish-future world reshaped by global warming. In one of the animated movie’s most powerful moments, a flock of Canada geese pass over the bridge’s red towers — and the waters of San Francisco Bay cover the highway. There are whales swimming where traffic should be. The bridge is underwater.

A likely scenario? Hardly. But the filmmakers worked with climate experts to convey the magnitude of the crisis. The movie certainly leaves an impression.

Redwood Creek, Humboldt County

Next the ride transitions to Redwood Creek, the aerial camera swooping low over the creek’s gentle waters as kayakers paddle downstream. It’s a serene moment.

So it’s jarring to realize that the creek’s namesake trees are increasingly threatened by worsening fire and intensifying drought — not to mention diminished fog. It’s painful to imagine such magnificent trees dying needlessly.

Napa Valley

As we flew from the redwood forest to the picturesque vineyards of wine country — colorful hot air balloons milling about, rolling hills extending into the distance, Jerry Goldsmith’s glorious score adding to the sense of awe — I thought about the wildfire smoke, water shortages and extreme heat crushing California winemakers.

I also remembered that California Adventure features a working vineyard. I doubt it’s going to fall victim to climate change. But many growers won’t be so lucky.

Monterey Bay

Transitioning to the deep blue waters of the Central Coast, I recalled my recent visit to the world-famous Monterey Bay Aquarium. As much as I was enchanted by the sea creatures — the jellyfish were wild, and don’t get me started on the adorable sea otters — I was disappointed that hardly any exhibits discussed the climate crisis.

I didn’t do a comprehensive survey. But I counted only two climate mentions, plus an abstract video about carbon dioxide molecules.

It’s not that the people in charge are ignoring climate change; the aquarium’s website explains that the surface of Monterey Bay has gotten 1.4 degrees warmer over the last century; that the waters are acidifying and losing oxygen; and that wildlife is suffering as a result. But climate is largely missing from the aquarium proper.

Climate is definitely a story better told at a science museum than at a theme park. But a lot more people visit Disneyland than the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Lake Tahoe

I started with Tahoe, so I won’t repeat myself. But I will suggest that there is, in fact, a role for environmental education at the Disneyland Resort.

Outside Soarin’, in California Adventure’s firefighting-themed Grizzly Peak Airfield, there’s a sign explaining the difference between “helpful fire” and “harmful fire”:

How great is that? Yes, you can still buy Smokey Bear merchandise at the nearby gift shop. But instead of simply promoting the outdated idea that all fire is bad and needs to be extinguished, somebody at Disney made a sign about the environmental benefits of letting certain blazes burn. And somebody else at Disney approved it.

I doubt we’ll ever see in-park newscasts about extreme heat and low reservoir levels. (Nor would I want that. It would be depressing, and Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth.) But 25 years from now, if not much sooner, a lot of guests will be confused if Disney is still playing a film showing abundant snow in the Sierra.

Yosemite National Park

After Tahoe, we see Yosemite Falls, water cascading into the valley. A person piloting a hang glider sails onto the screen. We catch a brief glimpse of Half Dome.

Where to begin? Vanishing glaciers. Trees killed by drought stress and bark beetles. Park closures caused by wildfire smoke and fierce storms. The National Park Service warns that due to shifting snowmelt patterns, visitors “may find Yosemite’s waterfalls at their peak during winter, leaving cliffs bare and meadows dry by midsummer.”

Hopefully Yosemite visitors can keep learning about the climate impacts, because the Trump administration is working to strip national parks of facts it doesn’t like.

Coachella Valley

The Soarin’ intro video claims that the next scene takes place in Palm Springs. But as a former Palm Springs resident, I’m obliged to point out that it’s actually a golf course in La Quinta, a 45-minute drive southeast.

Many riders shriek or laugh as a golf ball flies at their faces — it’s a cool effect! But I usually get distracted by the canal running through the course, which brings Colorado River water to desert cities and farms. Like tens of millions of Westerners who depend on the Colorado River for their water, Coachella Valley residents are threatened by the fact that Lake Mead and Lake Powell are terrifyingly low.

I’ve written about the bitter interstate conflict preventing California and its neighbors from saving water and propping up the reservoirs. If I were Disney’s new CEO, I’d put someone in charge of making sure Southern California never runs out of water.

The orange groves

The next scene takes place high above orange groves in Ventura County. But Soarin’ fans know it for the amazing orange scent that Disney pipes in. Yes, you can actually smell the Valencia oranges you’re flying over.

Now get this: Ventura is warming faster than any other county in the Lower 48 states. Extreme heat can take a toll on crops. One Ventura County grower lost more than 70% of her unpicked Valencia oranges during a 2018 heat wave. Others have been battered by fires and floods, and by mudslides destroying their irrigation systems.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Back to the desert. We soar over rugged brown peaks before slowing to admire a vast open vista. An ear-splitting roar heralds the arrival of military fighter jets.

As a San Diego Union-Tribune headline put it in 2022: “Climate change is ravaging Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, warn scientists.” The article explained:

“For decades, scientists assumed California’s Colorado Desert — which stretches from eastern San Diego County into Imperial Valley and up to Joshua Tree National Park — would withstand the impacts of climate change.

Today, researchers have changed their tune. Streams are disappearing, plants shriveling. Animals are desperate for nourishment with iconic bighorn sheep evermore dependent on human interventions.”

Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego

Sadly, watching this scene last month made me think about war. The air and water pollution unleashed on the people of Iran. The Strait of Hormuz, high gas prices and the case for clean energy independence — including electric cars. The rising military spending that could instead go toward climate.

My late grandfather was a proud World War II veteran who served in Europe and the Pacific; we rode Soarin’ together more than once. He yearned for a world without war, as do I. Surely less war will mean a more stable climate, and vice versa.

Malibu

This one hurt more than I expected. As the camera swept out over the Pacific Ocean, the water golden in the sunset light, I thought about the Palisades fire, and the homes that had burned in Malibu and Pacific Palisades.

The Soarin’ footage was gorgeous. But with climate on my mind, it brought back bad memories of smoke-tinged sunsets during the worst days of the fire.

Downtown Los Angeles

I could list all kinds of climate problems in my hometown: drought, wildfire, sea level rise, heat-trapping pollution spewed by cars and trucks on L.A.’s many freeways.

One of those freeways (the 110) serves as the focal point of this scene, traffic passing by the arena formerly known as Staples Center. But even though it was filmed at night — in fact, because it was filmed at night — I’m going to highlight rising temperatures. Heat kills more people than all other weather hazards combined. And global warming is extra harmful to human health because it’s driving up nighttime lows, depriving our bodies of the chance to cool down, as Angelenos learned last month.

Unhoused people — like those living on downtown L.A.’s Skid Row — are especially vulnerable to extreme heat. But plenty of people with homes are also at risk.

Disneyland

Soarin’ ends on Main Street, U.S.A. Tinker Bell sprinkles pixie dust. Fireworks erupt over Sleeping Beauty Castle. Happily ever after.

As a climate-conscious Disney fan, I’m eagerly awaiting October, when a big change is coming to Tomorrowland, next door to Main Street. Thanks to my prodding, Disney will shut down the 71-year-old Autopia ride, which still runs on polluting oil-powered engines. Eventually, Disney has promised to reopen the ride with electric vehicles.

I hope the company has the leadership and courage to look beyond the politics of the next few years and keep reimagining its storytelling with climate change in mind. I’ve argued for revitalizing Tomorrowland as a cleantech showcase; there are also loads of opportunities for small touches throughout the parks, like the “helpful fire” sign. And on a practical level, the parks need more shade. They need more water filling stations. They need to be pleasant places on a heating planet.

As for Soarin’ Over California, I still feel a surge of joy every time I ride, otherwise I wouldn’t keep doing it. Whatever melancholy I feel, it’s the same whenever climate is on my mind, which is most of the time — at a baseball game, on a hike, watching TV. Nothing can take California away from me. I loved this state 25 years ago, when I was eight years old. I’ll love it 25 years from now, when I’m in my late 50s.

But I don’t know if it’s the same state now as it was in 2001. It definitely won’t be the same state in 2051. Hopefully Disneyland won’t be the same either.

— Josh Ritter, “Thin Blue Flame”

Ten years ago this month, I visited Hell’s Kitchen for the first time.

Not the neighborhood in Manhattan, but a scorching expanse of dusty desert along the shore of California’s Salton Sea, where an Australian company pitched me on its plan to build a geothermal power plant. The executives told me they planned to start construction by 2018 and open the plant by 2020.

As those milestones failed to materialize, executives adjusted their pitch: Not only would they drill into superheated brine deep beneath the lake to generate 24/7 clean energy, they would extract lithium, a key mineral for electric vehicle batteries. When the company drilled its first wells in 2021, it touted plans for clean energy generation and mass lithium production by 2024 — developments that could help California and the nation meet aggressive climate targets. A ceremonial groundbreaking with one of President Biden’s top advisors was held in January 2024.

Two years later, Hell’s Kitchen is still a dusty desert. The “Lithium Valley” dreamed up by local officials and promoted by Governor Gavin Newsom has yet to arrive.

So, naturally, the company is pivoting to data centers.

Read more

I’ve seen variations of this type of statement so often it’s basically cliché: Imagine how Fox News would react if Joe Biden did anything like what Donald Trump just did.

Or: Can you imagine how long this kind of scandal would haunt Barack Obama? Republicans would never let it go.

Like I said, cliché. Still, it’s a useful framework for President Trump’s latest attack on the renewable energy industry. Via the New York Times:

Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms

The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston.

Under the unusual deal, TotalEnergies would forfeit its leases in federal waters for two wind farms, which would have been built off New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department would then reimburse TotalEnergies $928 million, the amount it paid for the leases during the Biden administration.

In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers.

The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels, a main driver of climate change, while throttling offshore wind power.

Extraordinary? Yeah, no kidding. Having failed to block construction of five coastal wind farms already nearing completion — turns out the rule of law does still apply in this country, at least sometimes — Trump’s appointees turned their attention to wind farms that hadn’t started construction. As a result, U.S. taxpayers will spend nearly $1 billion to cancel two projects that would have supplied badly needed electricity.

Whatever claim the GOP might once have had to being a party of free markets has long since died an ignoble death. It’s hard to do justice to the irony: Trump and his allies continue to bash liberals for “picking winners and losers” in the energy market, even as they themselves all but bribe a private company to switch from wind to fossil fuels. And the company is almost certainly accepting the bribe only because it knows Trump would have tried to block its wind farms anyway.

Yes, Democrats have approved laws and regulations incentivizing renewable energy, and raising costs for the fossil fuel industry. But what would the political fallout look like if a Democratic president pressured an oil giant into accepting a $1-billion payoff in exchange for the company canceling a fracking project in Texas and building a big wind farm in, say, California?

Seriously, what would the fallout look like? I’ve been trying to imagine it. Here’s what I’m coming up with:

• Immediate congressional oversight hearings, with some Republicans calling for the Democratic president to be investigated and impeached

• Weeks if not months of nonstop coverage on Fox News, Newsmax, the Free Press and other left-bashing media outlets, with a long tail lasting years

• A social media feeding frenzy led by influential figures in the MAGA movement, ultimately making life very scary for executives at the wind company

• A cavalcade of lawsuits by conservative think tanks, attorneys general and fossil fuel companies to overturn the $1-billion payoff

Suffice to say, none of that is happening in the opposite direction.

I also suspect the legacy media coverage might look a little different if the shoe were on the other foot. Can you imagine a world where Kamala Harris is president, and she pays an oil company $1 billion to shift gears from fracking to wind, and the New York Times doesn’t feel compelled to run a story on the front page?

Well, Trump did his version, and The Times’ story ran on Page B3. The Washington Post’s story ran on A16. The Wall Street Journal, so far as I can tell, didn’t run a story in print yesterday. Print newspaper placement is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s a good measure of the importance that editors place on a story.

Meanwhile, leading Democrats aren’t quite shrugging off the whole thing, but it’s not like they’re gearing up for battle either.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul — who last week proposed weakening the state’s climate law — described Trump’s deal with TotalEnergies as “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars” before pivoting to her commitment to an “all-of-the-above approach that includes renewables, nuclear and other energy sources.”

Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse — a well-meaning climate warrior who’s spent years working with Republicans on bipartisan “permitting reform” legislation to speed up construction of all energy infrastructure, including wind farms — called the $1-billion deal “stupid” and “not good,” E&E News reported. But even though he previously halted bipartisan negotiations when Trump tried to block construction of five offshore wind projects — because what good is a speedier permit if your project might get blocked later? — this time Whitehouse was more forgiving. He said the $1-billion agreement wasn’t a deal-breaker.

“It’s not per se illegal,” Whitehouse explained.

This whole episode is a case study in how Trump keeps shifting the Overton window — the range of ideas and arguments that are considered politically acceptable. It’s not per se illegal, so we shrug and accept our fate and move on. The story doesn’t make the front page. Permitting reform negotiations continue. Just another Monday.

And you know, I get it. It’s hard to maintain the capacity to be outraged when there are so many things to be outraged about — and when so many of them involve direct violence and human rights abuses. Trump and his cronies are good at this. They flood the zone and don’t care what their critics will say.

But how about we try to push the Overton window back in the other direction? When the president blows $1 billion to kill a wind project, it’s not just another Monday. It’s a perversion of American values. Let’s think like it, talk like it, act like it.

As John Oliver said in 2016, when Trump was first elected: “Keep reminding yourself, this is not normal. Write it on a Post-it note and stick it on your refrigerator.”

Good advice then, good advice now.

Share

Temps keep rising, climate journalism keeps falling

In October, I broke the story that CBS News — fresh off its acquisition by the family of Trump-friendly billionaire Larry Ellison — had gutted its excellent climate team. I reported that four of the team’s six journalists had lost their jobs as part of a round of network-wide layoffs. I later learned that a fifth journalist was reassigned.

Last week, the final shoe dropped. The L.A. Times’ Stephen Battaglio reported that the final member of CBS’ core climate team — national environment correspondent David Schechter — lost his job during another round of layoffs.

The legacy media’s continued contraction of climate coverage couldn’t come at a worse time for the American public. Just last week, a blistering heat waved torched records across the Western U.S. Here’s a thorough news roundup from Bob Henson and Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections. A few highlights:

• Fourteen states set all-time heat records for March

• California broke its March heat record — first on Wednesday, then on Thursday, then again on Friday, ultimately topping the original record by five degrees

• San Francisco hit 90 degrees for the first time ever in March

• Iowa hit 97 degrees, breaking the state’s March record by 5 degrees

• Flagstaff reached 84 degrees on March 19, four degrees warmer than the city has ever measured in April. Half a dozen other places also beat their April records

California, by the way, topped out at 112 degrees, as did Arizona — both states beating the entire country’s previous March heat record of 107 degrees, set in 1954.

I didn’t recognize either California locality to mark a 112-degree reading, so I looked up the weather stations and learned they’re down by the U.S.-Mexico border in my old haunt, Imperial County. It’s a broiling place that can ill afford to get any hotter.

Speaking of Imperial, I’m hard at work on “Death in the Desert, Part 3.” Stay tuned.

Until next time

It’s hot in the American West right now, frighteningly hot — triple digits Wednesday in Los Angeles County, mid-90s in the Bay Area, low 90s in St. George, Utah, mid-90s in Las Vegas. Phoenix is expected to hit 106 degrees shortly. It feels more like summer than just barely spring. Records are collapsing everywhere.

This is what climate chaos looks like. It’s not an anomaly, it’s reality.

It’s also a lot to process. It can take a toll on your mental health.

Which is why I’d been hoping that “Shrinking” — my favorite TV show these days, a brilliant and poignant comedy on Apple TV about therapists and grief and healing — would grapple with the climate disaster that devastated the L.A. County communities where the show is filmed, Altadena and Pasadena.

Alas, as much as I love the latest season, it’s somehow taking place in a world where the Eaton fire never happened. This despite the fact that the inferno — which killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes — burned several key filming locations, as mentioned in interviews by Harrison Ford and other cast members.

It’s possible the writers simply felt they didn’t have time to respond. Production on Season 3 began one month after the fire ignited, so maybe co-creators Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein didn’t feel comfortable reworking the story. If so, I’ll defer to their creative judgment.

But in a world starved for climate storytelling, I feel like a valuable opportunity was missed here. “Shrinking” is about therapists going above and beyond to help patients cope with trauma, while they themselves navigate tragedy — finding hope and humor along the way. If ever a TV show was perfectly positioned to help Angelenos meditate on last year’s fires, this was it. If ever a show could have served as a model for climate storytelling on screen, this was it.

Maybe “Shrinking” will circle back to the Eaton fire in Season 4. Maybe not.

I’ll keep watching either way, finding joy and affirmation in the characters and their struggles and triumphs. But I won’t stop asking for more climate stories — on screen and across all forms of media.

Speaking of which…

The Hollywood Climate Summit expands its horizons

I love the Hollywood Climate Summit, an annual gathering at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that brings together artists, activists, scientists, funders and other climate-conscious folk. It’s a unique event where professional environmentalists can schmooze with studio executives, screenwriters can share ideas for weaving global warming into their stories and comedians can stage a fake trial for Big Oil.

Recently, though, the summit’s co-founders started to feel like they were outgrowing the name — and the mission it represented.

They’d been hosting the conference since 2020, but they were increasingly organizing other events for an entertainment industry audience — at the Sundance Film Festival, for instance, and at Climate Week NYC. They found themselves branching out beyond Hollywood, too, developing programs and partnerships to support climate storytelling in video games, sports, music and podcasts.

“The storytelling spectrum we’re working with is much broader than Hollywood,” said summit co-founder Heather Fipps.

Last month, they rebranded. Fipps and fellow co-founder Allison Begalman launched Context Collaborative, which will serve as an umbrella organization.

“When it comes to climate and environment and the crises that we’re facing, the No. 1 thing is people’s attention,” Fipps said. “Entertainment, sports, games, films and TV and social media — that is where people are putting their priority and attention. If we can direct attention to climate on all of these channels, that is an opportunity that has to be embraced right now, and urgently.”

“When cultural attention is moved in directions counter to climate, that has a lasting and resounding impact on policy,” she added.

Share

The oil and gas industry knows how to consume cultural attention. The biggest fossil fuel companies spend $7 billion annually on media, advertising and public relations — and according to a new report from Clean Creatives, they’ve largely stopped bothering with ads pretending they’re transitioning to clean energy. They’ve shifted to telling us that fossil fuels are essential and permanent features of life.

My constant refrain: We need better stories in the cultural ether. Kudos to the Context Collaborative team for working on that problem.

We also need better politicians to help turn cultural consciousness into action…

Life after Gavin Newsom

Ballots go out in early May for California’s gubernatorial primary, with polls closing June 2. Pundits and political journalists can’t stop obsessing over the possibility that no Democrat will emerge from a crowded field, resulting in two awful Republicans — Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton — advancing to the November election.

Personally, I’m not worried — at least not yet. Two months is a long time! Or at least it should be; many democracies have far shorter election seasons than the U.S., where politicians spend way too much time campaigning. Meanwhile, Americans have been understandably distracted recently: war in Iran, troops invading U.S. cities, etc.

If none of the Democrats start pulling ahead in the next month, I’ll worry. But I keep thinking back to 2021, when Governor Gavin Newsom faced a recall vote.

Less than two months before that election, polling showing likely voters evenly split. Some Democrats panicked; Newsom ended up keeping his job overwhelmingly.

So if you’re a Californian evaluating the gubernatorial race, my advice is this: Figure out which candidate you like and worry about the polls later, when your ballot arrives. And if you care about climate, you might want to know that California Environmental Voters endorsed two candidates on Wednesday: Katie Porter and Tom Steyer.

Here’s what the group’s CEO, Mary Creasman, had to say:

“As a working mom, Porter has built her career on holding powerful interests accountable to make people’s lives better. In Congress, she took on Big Oil fearlessly and fought to protect our natural spaces. Steyer has a powerful track record fighting corporate polluters and advancing climate justice. He’s made it clear he can and will deliver on his campaign promises to deliver clean, affordable energy options.”

In January, I moderated a climate forum with four leading candidates: Porter, Steyer, Xavier Becerra and Eric Swalwell. California Environmental Voters hosted the forum; you can watch the full video here. I was interested to see that the group’s endorsement largely mirrored my own analysis, which was that Porter and Steyer were far and away the most qualified candidates to lead on climate.

Steyer has racked up several other impressive environmental endorsements, including preeminent activist Bill McKibben; former Sierra Club executive director Mike Brune; Jared Blumenfeld, former secretary of CalEPA; and John Podesta and Ali Zaidi, two of President Biden’s top climate advisors.

One more time, my analysis. Warning that you need to be a paid subscriber to read.

In other news

Water in the West:

• California’s Sierra Nevada snowpack is already low. The heat wave now underway will only make it worse. (Ian James, L.A. Times)

• A new report from UCLA concludes that restoring Mono Lake will require Los Angeles to stop taking water — and thanks to the stress of global warming, even that might not be enough. (Kurtis Alexander, San Francisco Chronicle)

• Microplastics and other industrial chemicals have reached the farthest reaches of the oceans, a new study finds. (Susanne Rust, L.A. Times)

On the landscape:

• California plans to bring 7% of the state’s land and waters under the care of tribes, beginning to right a 176-year-old wrong. (Noah Haggerty, L.A. Times)

• “It’s easy to imagine a future in which the entire canyon is healthy.” Restoration efforts are underway in Eaton Canyon. (Jaclyn Cosgrove, L.A. Times)

• Resolution Copper now owns Oak Flat, a sacred Indigenous site in Arizona, and has begun drilling for a copper mine. (Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic)

California controversies:

• State officials still routinely throw huge sums of money at freeway projects while slashing funds for biking and walking infrastructure, forcing cities to compete for safe streets. (Ariane Lange, Sacramento Bee)

• Plastic distributors are suing California, arguing the state is violating their free speech rights by requiring them to stop lying to consumers about what is actually recyclable. (Susanne Rust, L.A. Times)

• President Trump used his war on Iran to get new offshore oil production started in California again. We’ll see what the courts say. (Grace Toohey, L.A. Times)

Trump nonsense:

• The Trump administration is getting ready to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research and sell it for parts. (Eric Niiler, New York Times)

• Interior Secretary Doug Burgum may ask the “God Squad” to strip endangered species protections to advance oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. (Catrin Einhorn, New York Times)

• Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s second order forcing a Washington coal plant to stay open is just as meaningless as the first one. The plant is generating no power because it’s too expensive to run and isn’t needed. (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)

Lastly: Having failed to block offshore wind development on fake “national security” grounds, the Trump administration may just pay a developer to cancel its projects, the New York Times’ Maxine Joselow reports — spending nearly $1 billion! The developer would agree to invest in fossil gas infrastructure, too. Absolutely ludicrous.

Until next time

First off, thank you for following along this week as I published five stories in five days! If you want to catch up, here’s what I wrote:

• Day 1: Rooftop solar loses in court, again

• Day 2: NBC giveth, and NBC taketh away

• Day 3: Los Angeles needs a bold new leader

• Day 4: Everyone go see ‘Hoppers’ ASAP

• Day 5: Phillips 66 polluted L.A.’s water. Trump won’t prosecute

I’m especially grateful to everyone who made the decision to support my work with a paid subscription. I started the week hoping to add 50 paid subscribers; I’m thrilled to say we exceeded that goal. Thank you for helping me make a living, and for keeping this publication alive.

Over time, I still need more folks to step up and pay for Climate-Colored Goggles, or I won’t be able to keep it going. Like I’ve said before, I know a lot of folks can’t afford to pay, and that’s OK. I’m committed to making most posts free to read.

But right now, paying readers make up less than 11% of total subscribers. I think we can do better. We can get that percentage higher.

So let’s finish the week strong. Please click here to upgrade to a paid subscription, or use the button below. If you’re a free subscriber, it’ll say “upgrade to paid”:

Subscribe now

I have big plans for Climate-Colored Goggles, and I can’t wait to share them with you. I love hearing from readers, so please let me know what you think.

If you were waiting to see whether I could really do it before signing up for a paid subscription — well, the time has come. Upgrade to a paid subscription here.

Thank you so much for your support. Now, on to today’s story.

In the final months of Joe Biden’s presidency, federal prosecutors charged oil giant Phillips 66 with several crimes, accusing the Houston company of violating the Clean Water Act by dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of dirty wastewater from its Los Angeles County oil refinery into the local sewer system.

I took a special interest because Phillips enjoys a cozy relationship with the Dodgers, of whom I am a die-hard fan. Orange-and-blue logos advertising the oil company’s 76 gasoline brand loom large at Dodger Stadium; there’s also a storage tank painted with a Dodgers logo at the Phillips refinery. Like other oil companies that sponsor baseball teams, Phillips is using America’s national pastime to sanitize its corporate image.

Anyway, Phillips was scheduled to stand trial for its alleged crimes last month. But in a last-minute twist, the company reached a deferred prosecution agreement — kind of like a settlement — with the Trump administration.

The parties agreed to postpone trial until 2029. At that point, the case will most likely be dropped, allowing Phillips to avoid criminal penalties altogether.

“As an environmentalist and a former prosecutor, I don’t like this,” said Erina Kwon, a senior attorney at the nonprofit advocacy group LA Waterkeeper.

Indeed, when I learned about the deal — which has gone largely unnoticed since it was filed in court nearly two months ago — my first reaction was to wonder whether President Trump’s Department of Justice was letting Phillips off the hook with a slap on the wrist. This administration loves doing favors for fossil fuel companies, after all. What’s more, the deal was signed by an especially notorious Trump appointee: Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who represented Trump in the hush money trial that led to his conviction on 34 felony counts.

Still, reading the agreement made me question whether it was so bad.

Phillips paid an $8 million fine, which sounded significant, given that the original news coverage referenced just $2.4 million in possible fines should the company be convicted. The oil giant also agreed to follow a Clean Water Act compliance plan at eight refineries in other states, which sounded logical, since Phillips recently closed the local refinery where the alleged crimes occurred. Under the deferred prosecution agreement, the feds will move to dismiss the case in 2029, so long as Phillips follows the compliance plan.

Was this a good outcome? I needed to ask a lawyer.

It took me a few weeks to find someone with the right expertise (and time to read the 53-page agreement). My first hit was Jennifer Novak, a former deputy attorney general for the state of California. She now represents companies in manufacturing and other industries, focusing on environmental law.

Novak thought the whole thing seemed straightforward: Phillips 66 broke the law and was motivated to avoid trial. She said the deal looked fair.

“I don’t find it all that unusual or unreasonable,” she said.

Although the Clean Water Act compliance plan didn’t strike her as anything special, she did like a provision requiring a third-party auditor.

“You have somebody who isn’t the federal government and isn’t the company coming in to monitor, and potentially calling things out,” she said.

LA Waterkeeper’s Kwon had a totally different analysis.

Kwon previously served as a deputy district attorney in L.A. County. She noted that not only did Phillips 66 dump highly contaminated wastewater twice, it failed to tell the county on both occasions.

“While ordinary negligence may explain the non-compliant discharges, knowingly failing to report the discharge to [L.A. County] is much more serious and smacks of bad faith,” Kwon said in an email.

Kwon wasn’t impressed by the Clean Water Act compliance plan, saying it mirrored the company’s existing obligations. As for the $8 million penalty, she said it appeared to be calculated based on a legal standard allowing a polluter to be fined up to “twice the gross gain” resulting from its violations. Which made her want to know: What did the company gain from its violations? In other words, how much money might it have saved by delaying expenditures that would have prevented the pollution?

The agreement doesn’t say. We don’t know how the $8 million fine was calculated.

All of which makes it hard to determine whether the Trump administration is playing fair or letting Phillips 66 off the hook.

Kwon called the assistant U.S. attorneys working the case “stand-up prosecutors.” She said it was unclear whether they had decided that a deferred prosecution was the right course of action, or whether a political appointee had interfered with their work.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. A Phillips 66 spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

One thing’s for sure: In two weeks, I’ll be back at Dodger Stadium for Opening Day, cheering on the World Series champions and staring at those darned 76 logos.

The refinery is gone, but the stench remains.

Iran, oil and electric vehicles

I don’t have anything terribly insightful to say about Trump’s war on Iran, except to amplify what Bill McKibben keeps writing in his wonderful newsletter, The Crucial Years: A world fueled by oil is inherently unstable and prone to price shocks; a world powered by clean electrons is cheap and freeing and much, much safer.

A few stories about the war-fueled energy crisis:

• The Trump administration is using the war to justify oil drilling off the coast of California. (Clara Harter, L.A. Times)

• Rising gas prices could give the slowing EV market a much-needed jolt. (Caroline Petrow-Cohen and Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

• Thanks to Gavin Newsom, California has the power to cap oil refinery profits and curb gas prices. So why isn’t it using those powers? (Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters)

In other oil and EV news:

• U.S. car companies keep saying they need to shift to EVs or they’ll be killed by China — and yet they keep shifting more resources to pickup trucks, SUVs and muscle cars. (Keith Naughton and David Welch, Bloomberg)

• The California city of Benicia has long been defined by a Valero oil refinery. What happens after the refinery shuts down in April? (Matthew Green, the Guardian)

• Turns out electric vehicle batteries are lasting years longer than experts originally expected. Awesome! (Camila Domonoske, NPR)

As California and the West heat up, Tom Steyer talks climate

Kudos to HEATED’s Emily Atkin for this interview with billionaire climate advocate and California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer. It was fascinating to watch Emily press Steyer on whether a billionaire can be trusted to lead California — and whether it’s ethical for billionaires to exist at all.

I had a chance to interview Steyer, among other leading candidates for governor, at a climate forum earlier this year. You can watch the full video here.

Also see this piece for my detailed analysis of the candidates: Steyer, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell. (That’s one of the few stories I’ve put behind a paywall — another reason to consider a paid subscription!)

Subscribe now

Broadly speaking, I think Steyer has made a compelling case for loosening the grip of the big utility companies and giving Californians greater ability to generate their own electricity with solar panels. A few relevant headlines:

• Virginia will become the second state to let households install do-it-yourself, balcony solar panels. Is California next? (Elizabeth Ouzts, Canary Media)

• Electric utilities across the country see balcony solar on the rise. In many places, they’re trying to stop it. (Jeff Brady, NPR)

• Oregon failed to advance several big climate bills, including “polluters pay” and balcony solar legislation. (Gosia Wozniacka, the Oregonian)

• California continues to be a terrible laggard at community solar relative to other states, thanks to the Public Utilities Commission. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

If Californians need a reminder of why climate should be top of mind come election time, the next few weeks will offer a reminder. It’s going to be scorching.

Actually, it’s already been scorching — here and across the Western U.S.:

• It was so hot during the L.A. Marathon in early March that organizers let people bail at mile 18 and still get a medal. (Alissa Walker, Torched)

• Phoenix just concluded its warmest winter on record — by three whole degrees (breaking last year’s record). Albuquerque and Salt Lake City also set records, as did nine states. (Sara Tonks and Jonathan Erdman, the Weather Channel)

• Palm Springs is forecast to hit 104 degrees on Wednesday, which would break the daily record by nine degrees. L.A. could also see triple digits next week, which has never happened in March. (Ben Noll, Washington Post)

In other heat-related news, the Athletic’s Henry Bushnell reports that FIFA will allow TV broadcasters to cut to commercials during mandatory “hydration breaks” — made necessary by global heating — during this year’s World Cup. Which means the climate crisis isn’t all bad: It’s creating more opportunities for advertising.

Share

In other news

Climate backsliding:

• New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to delay the state’s longstanding target of cutting emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. (Marie J. French, Politico)

• Nevada’s biggest electric utility projects it won’t reach 50% clean energy by 2030 — a mandate that was added to the state constitution by voters — because data centers will require so much electricity, and because Trump is making it so hard to build solar farms. (Amy Alonzo, the Nevada Independent)

• Arizona Republicans repealed the state’s meager renewable energy requirements. (Wayne Schutsky, KJZZ)

Water in the West:

• Nevada is so frustrated and worried over the lack of progress on Colorado River negotiations that it’s broken from the other Lower Basin states and proposed its own solution. (Alan Halaly, Las Vegas Review-Journal)

• Yes, alfalfa is a problem in the Colorado River Basin. But it’s not the problem that needs to be solved right now. (Jonathan P. Thompson, the Land Desk)

Climate in the courts:

• The Trump administration is suing California to undo vehicle pollution rules that are nearly 15 years old. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

• Eighteen young Californians appealed a judge’s dismissal of their climate lawsuit against the EPA. They claim their constitutional rights are being violated. (Blanca Begert, L.A. Times)

Power struggles:

• Texas produced more electricity from big solar farms than California last year — although if you add in rooftops, California was still the solar leader. (Dan Gearino, Inside Climate News)

• “If a small Christian shrine sat on this site … decision-makers would understand what ‘sacred’ means.” Tribes are furious over a federal agency’s decision to permit a pumped hydro project in Washington. (B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster, High Country News)

• Turning Point USA, the late Charlie Kirk’s far-right advocacy group, has decided to get involved in a Phoenix-area public utility election with big energy and water stakes. (Jason Plautz, E&E News)

The Los Angeles fires:

• What happens when you lose your Oscar statuette in a wildfire? In L.A., a bunch of folks are finding out. (Josh Rottenberg, L.A. Times)

• The Palisades fire led to the closure of Pacific Palisades’ newspaper. Fortunately, new owners are bringing it back. (Clara Harter, L.A. Times)

Until next time

• Day 1: Rooftop solar loses in court, again

• Day 2: NBC giveth, and NBC taketh away

• Day 3: Los Angeles needs a bold new leader

I need your help to keep producing Climate-Colored Goggles. If you’re reading for free, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

The first time I heard about “Hoppers,” I was worried.

It was 2024, shortly after President Trump’s reelection, and the Hollywood Reporter had published a story exploring Pixar’s decision to cut a storyline about a transgender character from the Disney+ streaming series “Win or Lose.” The story also referenced an upcoming movie, “Hoppers.” It cited a former Pixar artist who said the filmmakers were “forced to downplay its planned message of environmentalism.”

“Hoppers” was released last weekend — and Disney-owned Pixar now admits that it toned down the film’s environmental message. The Wall Street Journal quoted a Pixar executive as saying that before the changes, it “felt like a message movie.”

Folks, I went to see “Hoppers,” and I’m pleased to report that it was wonderful. So much joy, so much pathos and above all a beautiful environmental message.

Quick plot summary: A college student named Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) wants to stop Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm) from building a freeway overpass through a serene forest glade, where animal-loving Mabel used to sit quietly with her grandma, listening to the sounds of nature and working through her anger issues. Jerry was only able to secure a permit for his freeway (yes, this is an animated movie for families that deals with infrastructure permitting!) because there was no wildlife left in the glade — no beavers, no frogs, no nothing.

So what does Mabel do? She discovers that one of her college professors has invented “hopping” technology that lets humans “hop” their consciousness into lifelike robotic animals. Mabel commandeers the tech and transfers her consciousness into a robotic beaver, then sets out to recruit a real-life beaver to reclaim the glade. Because beavers are a keystone species, they’re the key to rebuilding a thriving wildlife population that will make it impossible for Mayor Jerry to build his overpass.

The whole thing is wacky, heartrending and wildly relevant to modern environmental discourse. Human development butting up against biodiverse animal habitat? A literal freeway as the instrument of destruction? It’s a good thing I was sitting in the back of the theater, because I kept pulling out my phone to take notes — like when Jerry brags about how great his newly completed freeway will be.

“Ta-da! The Beaverton Beltway. Getting you where you need to go up to four minutes faster,” he says.

That’s not the only time “Hoppers” pokes fun at the absurdities of car culture. Jerry’s beloved freeway, which he sees as a ticket to reelection as mayor of Beaverton, runs in a loop around the city, “connecting Beaverton to itself.” In a mid-credits scene, several animals crack jokes about how much humans love big cars and traffic.

It’s not all surface-level gags: When Mabel discovers that Jerry broke the law to get his freeway permit, he lashes out at her, snarling without a trace of humor, “What law?”

Some of the most thoughtful scenes ask whether people can be trusted to care for the natural world, or whether they’re irredeemably selfish — and incapable of seeing how the human and natural worlds are one and the same. At first, Mabel isn’t hopeful. Her beaver friend King George (Bobby Moynihan) is more optimistic.

“I was so happy that this was the story [Pixar] ended up telling,” said Emily Fairfax, a geography professor and ecohydrologist at the University of Minnesota.

Fairfax is a beaver expert who consulted extensively with Pixar on “Hoppers.” She spent five years working with director Daniel Chong as well as animators and other artists, helping them portray beavers and their wetland ecosystems as accurately as possible. She took Pixar staffers to field sites in Colorado and Wyoming, and showed them three years of camera footage from ponds that she monitors in California’s San Luis Obispo County.

The artists did a good job. At one point, the Pixar team showed Fairfax a rendering of willows that was so lifelike it could have been one of her study sites.

“I was absolutely beyond impressed,” she told me.

Fairfax loved the movie’s environmental message because humans are the No. 1 threat to beavers, and to the habitat they share with so many critters — lizards, skunks, owls, raccoons, deer, owls, herons and more, all packed into wetlands that store spectacular amounts of carbon, limiting global warming. She appreciated how “Hoppers” shines a light on the dangers of unchecked development, and how Mayor Jerry — spoiler alert! — comes to learn that people can’t survive without animals.

That certainly includes beavers, whose ability to engineer fire-resilient ecosystems is legendary — and increasingly important in a world besieged by worsening fires, as the film dramatizes in larger-than-life fashion.

“In the end, [Mayor Jerry] realizes that protecting animals is also protecting people,” Fairfax said. “We need to partner with nature to deal with the climate crisis. We need to partner with nature to deal with the biodiversity crisis.”

“Hoppers” isn’t perfect. Jerry ultimately reroutes the freeway to spare Mabel’s glade, which sounds good until you stop and realize we shouldn’t be building new freeways at all. Living near freeways is terrible for human and animal health, which means the beavers and other glade-dwellers will still be impacted — as will Beaverton residents. Even before accounting for the additional climate pollution.

Will I always wonder if “Hoppers” was originally supposed to end with the Beaverton Beltway replaced with a biking and walking path? Yes, yes I will.

But that’s a minor complaint. Jerry may not have become a dedicated nature advocate, but Fairfax thinks he had a “light bulb moment.” Maybe next election, he’ll be ready to run on a platform of creating more parks.

“It’s very easy to let perfect be the enemy of progress,” Fairfax said. “If everyone could start acknowledging how important nature is, that would make a big difference.”

I actually wonder if Pixar executives did climate advocates a favor by toning down the environmental messaging. A light touch can go a long way. If you whack moviegoers over the head with a heavy-handed lesson, they’re liable to reject it unless they already agree with you. And if your message is so distracting that it gets in the way of telling a good story, you’re wasting your time. Nobody will remember what you wanted them to care about. The most important thing is to make people feel something.

Which is why I loved “Hoppers” — not because it was such a good climate parable, although it was, but because of Mabel, who spends most of the movie processing her fury and grief over a world she’s trying desperately to save but feels like she’s failing. During a low moment, she turns to George the beaver and asks, “Why doesn’t anyone else care?” Her despair is palpable.

But Mabel refuses to give up. She steadies herself with her grandmother’s wise words about the calming power of nature: “It’s hard to be mad when you feel like you’re part of something big.”

Leaving the theater, I felt like I was part of something big. Turns out I was. “Hoppers” brought Pixar the best opening weekend for an original animated film at the domestic box office in nearly a decade, earning $46 million in the U.S. and Canada.

If you haven’t seen the movie, check it out. And if Pixar hasn’t mapped out the sequel yet, Fairfax has a pitch: an origin story for Loaf the beaver and Tom Lizard. She thinks maybe they were forced from their original home — perhaps by catastrophic flooding, which would create an opening for another climate angle.

Me, I’d love to see Mayor Jerry recruit a solar energy developer to Beaverton, only for the developer to propose a power line through the glade. Jerry could say he’s atoning for all the freeway pollution, and Mabel could feel conflicted because she thinks clean energy is good. A few of her animal friends could hop into human bodies to learn why people are so obsessed with phones and computers and other power-hungry devices…

OK, so it needs a little work. But hey, why not dream?

Share