Climate Point: Southern California's warehouses expanding into the desert

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m Erin Rode, writing from Palm Springs, California. 

Here at The Desert Sun, we’ve been closely following the potential spread of large fulfillment centers and warehouses eastward from California’s warehouse-inundated Inland Empire toward the desert. This week, that is closer to reality, with the city of Desert Hot Springs approval of a 3.4 million-square-foot e-commerce warehouse and distribution center that would be among the largest warehouses in the United States.

The tenant has yet to be revealed, but developer Seefried Industrial Properties also recently completed a 3.4 million-square-foot warehouse for Amazon near San Diego County, which seems to be part of a recent trend toward larger warehouses from the e-commerce giant.  

Amazon's largest warehouse opened in Delaware last year, a 3.8 million-square-foot facility. Amazon also completed a 3.6 million-square-foot distribution center in Tennessee last year, which was the country's second-largest industrial project completed in 2021 after the Delaware facility. 

In the South Coast Air District, which covers a large swath of Southern California and is home to thousands of warehouses, the largest currently operational warehouse is a 2.1 million-square-foot Stater Bros. warehouse in the city of San Bernardino. 

As desert residents express concerns over how the Desert Hot Springs facility could impact local air quality and desert habitat, Amazon also continues to come under fire for its global impacts on the environment. The company is drastically undercounting its carbon footprint, according to a report recently obtained and reported on by Will Evans at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. 

Here are some other stories that may be of interest this week. 

Some of these stories are only available to subscribers. You can subscribe to The Desert Sun here, which includes access to the e-editions of all Gannett/USA Today publications. 

Must-read stories

Redlining and air pollution. Neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s had higher levels of air pollution eight decades later, a new study found, providing the latest example of how racist policies from decades ago continue to contribute to inequality in the United States, Raymond Zhong and Nadja Popovich report in the New York Times. 

PFAS. After scientists discovered combinations of carbon and fluorine molecules along a stretch of southern New Jersey in 2020, the state is now on track to become the first in the country to regulate the chemicals, part of a family of thousands of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS. The substances are used in products like Teflon cookware, rain gear, and food packaging, but there’s also increasing concern about the potential health effects of the chemicals. Studies of the New Jersey PFAS found rats that received even an extremely small dose of the chemicals experienced liver and neurological damage, and drops in red blood cell counts. 

While it seems like New Jersey effectively took action against PFAS, documents indicate that the U.S. Environmental Protection knew in advance of the chemicals’ danger but didn’t take action, Kyle Bagentose reports for USA Today, which some experts say point to the broader trend of the EPA putting the interests of chemical companies ahead of public health. 

$5.44 a gallon. With the average price for a gallon of gas in California reaching $5.44 this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a tax rebate in his State of the State address but rejected calls to increase oil drilling in the Golden State. 

Meanwhile, some are hoping that the high price of gas — caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continued COVID-19 economic recovery — could accelerate the shift to electric cars, Sammy Roth reports for the Los Angeles Times. 

Political climate

Heat, floods and fires. Last week, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest report, warning that some parts of the plant are rapidly reaching the point where it will be too hot to survive. The impacts of the world’s warming climate are already visible in North America, with people dying from more intense heat waves, hurricanes and flooding, Dinah Voyles Pulver reports for USA Today. The report’s authors found that North America could see species-killing marine heat waves, stronger hurricanes, extreme rainfall, and more extensive burned acreage in parts of the West, among other widespread impacts. 

"Climate change impacts in North America have been occurring faster, and will become more severe, much sooner than we had previously thought," said co-author Sherilee Harper, an associate professor in the public health school at Canada's University of Alberta.

Maladaptation. Of course, with all of these warnings of gloom and doom, it makes sense that some officials are trying to implement adaptation projects to help their communities prepare for the impacts of the warming climate. But despite good intentions, many of these projects are actually “maladaptation,” a term that is used throughout the latest IPCC report, Leslie Kaufman and Eric Roston report for Bloomberg. Examples of this include building sea walls to protect communities from rising oceans that make areas outside of the sea wall more susceptible to flooding, or planting trees in ecosystems that weren’t meant to be forested. 

Tailpipes. The Biden administration approved a waiver this week that allows California to again set its own tougher emissions rules for cars and SUVs, reversing a 2019 decision by former President Donald Trump to revoke the state’s decades-long authority to set its own limits on auto emissions. With at least 15 states and the District of Columbia signed on to the Golden State’s vehicle standards, the waiver is likely to usher in stricter emissions standards for new passenger vehicles nationwide, Matthew Daly reports for the Associated Press.

Hot takes

36.3 billion tons. Worldwide carbon dioxide emissions have bounced back to their highest level in history as the economy rebounds from COVID-19, rising by 6% in 2021 to 36.3 billion tons. USA Today

Offshore oil. In California, Santa Barbara County rejected ExxonMobil’s proposal to restart the company’s offshore oil wells that were shut down in 2015 after a pipeline ruptured and sent 140,000 gallons of oil onto a state beach and into the ocean. Los Angeles Times

People power. Action on climate in Arizona and beyond depends on the power of the sun, people, and politics, writes Joan Meiners in the Arizona Republic. 

Losing the rainforest. The Amazon rainforest may be approaching a “tipping point” of dieback, the point at which the rainforest would turn into savanna, a new study found. USA Today

Hurricane deaths. Hurricanes are associated with higher death rates even after they land, new research shows. USA Today

And another thing

Mapping biodiversity loss. A new map provides the most detailed analysis of its kind of the places in the lower 48 United States most likely to have plants and animals at high risk of global extinction, Catrin Einhorn and Nadja Popovich reported for the New York Times. California has the most imperiled biodiversity of any state in the contiguous U.S., and the Southern Appalachia region is also a hot spot for species at risk of vanishing, according to the analysis by nonprofit conservation research group NatureServe.