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The Trump administration left President Biden a dilemma in the California desert: a plan to remove protections from millions of acres of public lands and open vast areas to solar and wind farms.
Biden’s team could easily block the proposed changes, which were slammed by conservationists as a last-gasp effort by the outgoing administration to support private industry at the expense of wildlife habitat and treasured landscapes.
But even if Trump’s 11th-hour proposal goes nowhere, it offers a preview of the battles that could play out on public lands in California and other Western states as Biden looks to fight climate change by ramping up renewable energy development.
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The Trump administration left President Biden a dilemma in the California desert: a plan to remove protections from millions of acres of public lands and open vast areas to solar and wind farms.
Biden’s team could easily block the proposed changes, which were slammed by conservationists as a last-gasp effort by the outgoing administration to support private industry at the expense of wildlife habitat and treasured landscapes.
But even if Trump’s 11th-hour proposal goes nowhere, it offers a preview of the battles that could play out on public lands in California and other Western states as Biden looks to fight climate change by ramping up renewable energy development.
Print
This is the Dec. 10, 2020, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West.
More than 111 million acres of U.S. wilderness have been designated since 1964, when the Wilderness Act was signed by President Johnson. It’s the highest level of protection the federal government offers, ensuring that wild lands remain free of permanent roads, motor vehicles, commercial enterprise and structures of any kind.
The law’s definition of wilderness is the stuff of legend: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”