Climate Point: Changing of the guard

BY SAMMY ROTH

Thursday, October 25

We tamed the Colorado River to supply the West with water and power. Now, can the Grand Canyon's lifeblood be saved?

This week: Rafting the Grand Canyon, and the future of wind power

Also, Climate Point is coming under new management.

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. My name is Sammy Roth, and I've got some personal news: After four years reporting for The Desert Sun and the USA TODAY Network, I've accepted a job covering energy at the Los Angeles Times. It's a change I'm excited for, but it also means I have to leave Climate Point behind. This is my last edition of the newsletter.

Never fear: Climate Point will continue soon under The Desert Sun's incoming environment reporter, Janet Wilson. I hope you'll all keep reading, and follow her on Twitter @janetwilson66. You can keep up with my work by following me @Sammy_Roth.

Thank you to everyone who subscribes to this newsletter, and especially to those of you who previously read The Current, my California-focused newsletter. Your support and feedback have made this worthwhile. It's been a pleasure getting to know you.

Here are some other things you might want to know:

MUST-READ STORIES:

Unnatural wonder: A journey through the Grand Canyon: Hats off to my colleagues at the Arizona Republic, who published a truly remarkable piece of journalism this week. Reporter Brandon Loomis and photojournalist David Wallace took a 16-day raft trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon , to learn firsthand how human beings have irrevocably changed this natural wonder - and what we might do to keep it as natural as possible in the future. You should watch David's half-hour documentary, and read Brandon's in-depth story. The Republic also published a behind-the-scenes video showing how they kept all that camera equipment safe (and charged) on the river.

The future of the Palm Springs wind farms: If I were to walk across The Desert Sun newsroom and step out onto the balcony, I would see the San Gorgonio Pass wind turbines in the distance. (If you've ever driven from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, or if you live here, you've seen them too.) The iconic landscape may look a lot different in the future. There's a good chance energy developers will "repower" the San Gorgonio Pass by replacing aging turbines from the 1980s with bigger, state-of-the-art models, as I reported for The Desert Sun. A full repowering could reduce the number of turbines from more than 2,000 today to just 600 or 700, which could nonetheless generate more electricity than today's fleet because the newer models are so much more powerful.

One of the four biggest wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass, as seen from a drone on Oct. 17, 2018. The machine is 410 feet tall when the blades reach their highest point.

Jay Calderon and Richard Lui/The Desert Sun

ENERGY, CLEAN AND DIRTY:

The age of nuclear waste is just beginning: There's all sorts of hand-wringing in renewable energy circles about what role, if any, zero-carbon nuclear power can or should play in fighting climate change. An important part of the discussion is the issue of nuclear waste. So I appreciated this fascinating deep dive from Keith Matheny at the Detroit Free Press, about the 60,000 tons of radioactive waste sitting on the shores of the Great Lakes, and our general failure as a society to confront the question of where to store spent nuclear fuel. Keith explains the risks to the Great Lakes region and explores why America hasn't been able to build permanent storage for nuclear waste.

Hey look, Tesla actually turned a profit: Since this is my last edition of Climate Point and life's too short to worry, I'm going to once again break my pledge to stop talking about Tesla. USA TODAY's Nathan Bomey reports that Elon Musk's electric carmaker turned a profit last quarter as the company ramped up production and deliveries of its Model 3 sedan . For all of Musk's erratic behavior and criticism of the media, it would be great for the world if he could succeed in bringing electric cars into the mainstream. Transitioning away from gasoline is one of the world's biggest climate challenges.

A prototype version of the entry-level Tesla Model 3 sedan sits parked in front of Elon Musk's Gigafactory battery plant east of Reno, Nevada in 2017.

Marco della Cava/USA TODAY

POLITICAL CLIMATE:

Agriculture's role in fighting climate change: Interesting story here from Donnelle Eller at the Des Moines Register, who reports that two of America's biggest agriculture companies, Bayer and Corteva, say they want to be part of the solution to climate change . It's a stance that's been taken by major oil companies as well, and of course the important thing is whether these industries actually follow through. In the meantime, the American Farm Bureau Federation continues to lobby against climate action and sow uncertainty about climate science, as Georgina Gustin, Neela Banerjee and John H. Cushman Jr. report for InsideClimate News. Their story explains how that lobbying has left the Farm Bureau's members ill-prepared to respond to the effects of climate change.

Trump dives into California's water wars: The president signed a memo instructing federal agencies to loosen environmental rules that Central Valley farmers say unfairly limit the amount of water they can take from some of California's rivers and streams. All you need to know is that Trump's memo probably won't have much practical impact, and was most likely designed to help several Republican politicians facing tough reelection fights, as Joshua Yeager and Damon Arthur report for the Redding Record Searchlight.

AND ANOTHER THING:

I don't pay much attention to highway billboards. But maybe some people do. Maybe they'll see the new billboard near Richmond, Indiana encouraging drivers to "keep the faith and vote for science," which was put up by an organization that says science and faith are not mutually exclusive, as Sarah Bowman reports for the Indianapolis Star. Maybe some people of faith will see the message and take it to heart. Maybe science will begin to displace ideology and tribalism as a main factor influencing voting and public policy. And maybe that billboard in Indiana will have played a small role in getting us there.

Lots of maybes in the world today, and not too many certainties. I'm just doing my best like everyone else, trying to tell true stories that help make things better.

The work continues.

That's all for this week. For more climate, energy and environment news, follow me on Twitter @Sammy_Roth. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox here.