Climate Point: Two minutes to midnight

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Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate change, energy and the environment. As always, I'm Sammy Roth, writing to you from Southern California.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences — which was founded by scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project — just updated its Doomsday Clock, a symbolic measure of how close we are to global catastrophe. The news isn't good: Another 30 seconds ticked by on the clock, meaning we're two minutes to midnight, as Doyle Rice reports for Paste BN. The main culprits: climate change and the looming risk of nuclear war.

Here are some other things you might want to know:

MUST-READ STORIES:

Donald Trump just upended the solar industry: In a move long feared by solar advocates, President Trump slapped a 30% tax on imported solar panels. I wrote about the controversial decision, which could slow down the industry by making solar more expensive, potentially costing thousands of jobs (and making it harder to fight climate change). The impacts may be felt in states that voted for Trump. Here's the view from Kentucky, where the import tax and a state-level effort to reduce solar incentives could be a "one-two punch" for the industry, per James Bruggers at the Courier-Journal. That local incentive is already gone in Indiana, per Emily Hopkins at the Indianapolis Star.

California and Trump are haggling over fuel efficiency: Interesting scoop here from Mike Spector at the Wall Street Journal, who reports that top officials from California and the Trump administration are quietly debating the future of fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. Trump's people want to roll back the stringent Obama-era standards, but California might have the legal power to stop them. Meanwhile, James Bruggers at the Courier-Journal reports that the Sierra Club is out with a new ad slamming Ford for claiming to care about climate while pushing Trump to ease the fuel-efficiency standards — and selling an SUV that (maybe) gets worse mileage than the Model T.

CLIMATE IMPACTS:

How climate change can act as a destabilizing force: The New York Times' Somini Sengupta wrote a low-key terrifying story explaining how recent crises in Nigeria, Syria, Somalia and Iran were triggered in part by water crises. In these countries, water shortages helped fuel mass migration, violent insurgency and even war, as Sengupta reports. But the really scary part is that climate change is expected to make the Middle East and other regions hotter and drier, potentially making similar crises more likely.

If you want to see climate change, just look around: Climate impacts aren't limited to faraway places. They're being felt in Asheville, North Carolina, which just experienced its hottest year on record (Karen Chávez, Citizen-Times). They're being felt in Maricopa County, Arizona, where the Republican chair of the board of supervisors says something needs to be done about the increasingly dangerous heat that killed at least 150 people in 2016 (Brandon Loomis, Arizona Republic). They're being felt in Delaware, which just marked its second-warmest year on record (Maddy Lauria, The News Journal). And they're being felt in New Jersey, where lawmakers are getting back to work on climate following the departure of Gov. Chris Christie (Nicholas Pugliese, The Record).

How TV weather forecasters learn about climate change: I really enjoyed this story by Benjamin Spillman at the Reno Gazette-Journal about an annual conference of TV meteorologists near Lake Tahoe, where they learn about the latest climate change research from leading scientists. As one meteorologist said, "The only scientist most people see on a day to day basis is their local weather person" — so it's critical those weather people know what's happening with climate change. (Ben also made a short video featuring a Stanford scientist answering basic questions about climate change.)

ON OUR PUBLIC LANDS:

A public lands sell-off may or may not be in the works: Jonathan Swan at Axios got hold of a draft copy of Trump's long-awaited infrastructure plan. Some public lands advocates are freaking out, pointing to a line that seems to describe generating revenue for infrastructure projects by selling off federal lands. But it's kind of vague, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. Meanwhile, in Arizona, some lawmakers are pushing a bill that could result in the state suing the federal government to seize control of federal lands, as Brandon Loomis reports for the Arizona Republic. Arizona is home to some of the country's most beloved federal lands, including Grand Canyon National Park.

AND ANOTHER THING:

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is still in a lot of hot water — yes, I am hilarious — over his decision to exempt Florida from a plan that opens up every other coastal state to offshore oil and gas drilling. (The New York Times published a great map showing where drilling would be allowed.) As Republican and Democratic governors of other coastal states demanded exemptions like Florida's, Zinke told CNN that Florida's coastline is unique, saying, "The coastal currents are different, the layout of where the geology is."

Does anyone have any idea what he's talking about? I've been looking for an explanation and haven't been able to find one. I'm not sure there is one.

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.