S3E37: BLM Cozies Up To Renewable Energy Companies

0:00:08 - (Joe Geoffrey): Think the deserts are barren wastelands. Think again. It's time for 90 miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:31 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you, Joe, and welcome to 90 miles from the Desert Protection Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Clarke, and it is December 23rd as I record this and we have a really good episode for you which might just close out season three of 90 Miles from Needles. We might have one other episode coming your way. Have to make the arrangements for that one way or the other, whether we do it this year or next. But at any rate, we are just glad that you are still here with us at the end of this very challenging year.

0:01:04 - (Chris Clarke): And we hope that you're able to spend time between now and 1-2-ish without thinking too much about January 20th. That's what I'm going to try to do anyway. Now, I had a spectacular weekend this past weekend which consisted of digging a trench to fix a water main that I'd blown out, spending about 15 hours of more or less daylight hours making a few different unsuccessful attempts to patch it before I actually succeeded.

0:01:34 - (Chris Clarke): This involved having the water turned off to our house for 18 hours, something like that. Now, my PVC construction experience is pretty much limited to drip irrigation and similar things with almost no water pressure involved. So getting that water main pressure confined within patched pvc, that took some thought and a new learning curve or two. And my lower back is almost recovered. Something about digging in moist sand two feet deep that's compacted to get to the PVC pipeline, and then trying to fix something that is two feet below the level of your feet to do the cement application and that kind of stuff. It was, it was interesting. Now, this leak had actually been there for a little bit. I can tell because it had been leaking long enough that the local plants had sent all of their roots to get the water out of that tiny little leak. All along the bottom of the pvc, within two or three feet of the actual leak was a solid mass of roots which had gotten so intertangled, several different kinds of plants had contributed that these root masses were like solid blocks of wood.

0:02:49 - (Chris Clarke): Makes me think about woodworking projects, you know, maybe just deliberately planting a source of water a couple of feet down, shower head or something like that, letting a gallon per week run into it for a couple of years and then digging it up and seeing what kind of interesting mass of mixed wood roots has developed. I think that would be an interesting tabletop or turn bowl or stashbox or something like that.

0:03:14 - (Chris Clarke): Anyway, back to business. In this episode, we speak with Jimmy Tobias, freelance journalist who wrote a bombshell article in Inside Climate News this month about what seems very much to be collusion between the Nevada BLM and energy companies, specifically NV Energy, which is the largest energy company in Nevada, over the proposed Greenlink west and Greenlink north transmission lines. In the course of reporting on this, Jimmy was able to obtain some emails under the Freedom of Information act that I had intended to have volunteers read just to break things up.

0:03:51 - (Chris Clarke): Some of the emails were sent by people whose voices, I assume, do not sound like mine in the slightest. So I wanted to get a diversity of voices in there and I had planned that for this last weekend and that just did not happen. I want to thank Eva Soltis, Carrie Tuttle and Steve Brown for jumping up and volunteering to do some voiceover reading of these emails, and I only didn't set that up because I was fixing a water main.

0:04:19 - (Chris Clarke): I really appreciate you guys volunteering and we will take you up on that offer for some other episode. I also want to thank our newest donor, Richard Lee, for a wonderful Year End donation coming in actually today as we speak December 23rd. Really made our day over here, Richard. Thank you so much. In addition, we also want to thank Patrick Donnelly for his donation. Much appreciated and we are grateful for his support and for everything that he's doing to protect the desert in the Great Basin. A couple other things before we start our interview with Jimmy Tobias about Nevada's BLM state office and NV Energy. In the show Notes, you'll see a link to a podcast by the center for Western Priorities called the Landscape, the most recent episode of which features yours truly talking about the Cadiz Water Project and all of the problems with that zombie idea just won't die.

0:05:16 - (Chris Clarke): It's an interesting podcast overall, and they cover a lot of really good and germane stuff about public lands, so check them out now. I stammered more than I'm comfortable with in that interview, but I think you might find it worthwhile anyway. And while we're on the topic of other podcasts, if you have a desert podcast or related podcast that you really like, we're going to be putting out an episode sometime in January that talks about other podcasts we like to listen to that have something to do with our work here in the desert. Landscape by center for Western Priorities will definitely be on that list, as will the Border Chronicle with Todd Miller and Melissa Delbosque, who we've featured here in the past.

0:05:54 - (Chris Clarke): We already know about Desert Oracle because we don't live under a rock, despite our disheveled appearance. Ken has been a very supportive friend since our launch and we should come up with an excuse to have him on as a guest sometime soon. But if you know of another podcast we ought to be talking about, maybe it's a hyper local podcast about one particular small piece of the desert. Maybe it's episodes of a podcast that.

0:06:19 - (Chris Clarke): Doesn'T usually cover the desert, but the.

0:06:22 - (Chris Clarke): Episodes you're suggesting do feature desert issues.

0:06:24 - (Chris Clarke): Maybe a travelogue, something like that.

0:06:26 - (Chris Clarke): Anything along those lines. Let us know and if we like it, we will include it. And if you let us know who you are, we will credit you for the suggestion. You can email me at chris90miles from needles. Com and you can also call or if you're under age 50, text the number 763921996 and let us know about your favorite desert related podcast or podcast episodes other than here at 90 miles from Needles, of course.

0:07:02 - (Chris Clarke): With that, let's get to our interview with freelance journalist Jimmy Tobias talking about solar and transmission development in the state of Nevada and how the BLM has been working too closely with industry while treating conservationists as an enemy to be contended with.

0:08:04 - (Chris Clarke): Jimmy Tobias, thank you for joining us here at 90 miles from Needles.

0:08:09 - (Jimmy Tobias): Thanks for having me.

0:08:10 - (Chris Clarke): So you just had a blockbuster of an article come out in Inside Climate News as part of your long and prestigious career of being a freelance journalist. Do you want to tell us about what prompted you to look into Nevada BLM and its dealings with renewable energy companies and what you found?

0:08:31 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, I've been covering public lands issues for the last 10 years or so for a variety of outlets. And so I'm always looking, I'm just always looking out for what's going on with the public lands and major changes or major policy decisions by the Interior Department and other land agencies. I was made aware of this as I think it's pretty common now for people to be aware of the fact that there's a major boom in renewable energy going on industrial scale renewable energy, and a lot of that is taking place on federal lands. And Nevada is the heart of this boom on public lands. It's ground zero for the explosion of industrial scale solar and associated industrial activity.

0:09:18 - (Jimmy Tobias): And so I yeah, I ended up homing in on the state and learned about the Green Link lines, these two very large transmission lines that are being built in the state to facilitate solar development and other renewable development, and started digging from there, looking at how the Bureau of Land Management is handling this industrial build out, how it conducting itself, how it is working with renewable energy companies. And that's what the article is about.

0:09:47 - (Chris Clarke): And we will link to the article in our show notes. But can you give us the highlights of what you found?

0:09:55 - (Jimmy Tobias): The Biden administration this fall finalized a plan, it's Western Solar Plan, which is going to make available something like 31 million acres of federal land across the west for solar development. And a lot of that is taking place in Nevada. I think something like 12 million acres are being made available in Nevada for solar development. And a lot of that development hinges on the construction of these two transmission lines called the Green Link west and GreenLink north project.

0:10:25 - (Jimmy Tobias): Green west will stretch from Vegas to Reno and Green Link north will cut across the north central part of the state along the loneliest road of America, Highway 50. And this is going to really transform the face of Nevada. There's going to be a lot of new development in places that are relatively undisturbed right now, all in the name of fighting climate change. And the Bureau of Land Management is basically overseeing both the permitting for both the Green Link lines and the sort of the associated solar development. So I dug into how the agency is handling this major transformation of Nevada, and among other things, it's very clear that the Bureau of Land Management has a very cozy relationship, I think it's fair to say, with the developer of the Greenlink lines, which is NV Energy, the major electric utility in the state of Nevada.

0:11:20 - (Jimmy Tobias): That company is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which is owned by Warren Buffett and its shareholders. And I dug into how the BLM is handling it. They've approved. Now greenlink west and Green Link north is in the environmental review process, but the BLM made it a priority. And as the story kind of elucidates that there, there seems to be a very cozy, friendly relationship between top BLM officials in Nevada and top staffers at NV Energy.

0:11:51 - (Jimmy Tobias): And opponents of these projects don't get that kind of friendly treatment. In fact, BLM monitors local opposition, keeps an eye on them. So, yeah, there's this huge build out that's going to transform Nevada, and the federal agencies are very keen on getting it done. And unlike in other parts of the country, at least what experts told me, some of the experts I spoke to, there hasn't really been a comprehensive land management deal hammered out for Nevada like there was in Southern California with the DRECP that sort of looked at this large landscape in Southern California, set aside places for conservation, concentrated development in certain areas, innovation between conservationists, solar developers, others, and they created this compromise that sort of comprehensive effort has not been done in Nevada.

0:12:42 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah.

0:12:42 - (Chris Clarke): And it's interesting to me to see that some of the folks that were most concerned about the DRECP when it was happening in Southern California are actually advocating it now for other states because we've covered the DRE CP a little bit here and it continues to concern some of us that certain areas are handed to industry. But we certainly got a lot in return.

0:13:07 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, that's the sense I got from talking to people. Obviously no one thought it was perfect, but nobody sued. There were, and then there were large pieces of land that were set aside for conservation as part of that deal, which hasn't really happened here. There's these 12 million acres being made available in Nevada and as part of that, there's no associated conservation plan, so to speak, that sets aside new areas. In fact, one of the groups that's really concerned about greenlink west is concerned because it's going to cut through an ACEC or proposed AceClosafe that they've been working on. This is Friends of Noda Wilderness.

0:13:45 - (Jimmy Tobias): So yeah, that was, that was one theme here that there's a lot of people talk about. What's going on right now is akin to the Gold rush but for renewable energy.

0:13:51 - (Chris Clarke): Right.

0:13:52 - (Jimmy Tobias): Where there's just this huge number of proposals flooding into the state and Nevada is really, is ground zero. I think more than a third of the renewable energy development proposals that BLM is handling nationwide are in the state. It's, it's just a really massive influx of proposed industrial development. And, and a lot of it hinges on these, these transmission lines.

0:14:14 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah.

0:14:14 - (Chris Clarke): Obviously without the transmission lines there's no way to hook up to the grid to sell the power to utilities. You mentioned that opponents of the renewable build out and the transmission lines are being kept tabs on by Interior. I wonder if you could go into a little bit more detail there.

0:14:33 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, there were, as part of this project I did a lot of FOIA Freedom of Information act requests, just trying to dig in to get an inside look at how the BLM is handling it. And so I got a lot of communications from BLM officials and there were just cases where an NV Energy vice president would send the BLM an email saying, oh, this group that's opposed to the transmission line is holding a meeting tonight online.

0:14:58 - (Jimmy Tobias): And the BLM would be like, oh, on our, I'll check it out on my off time or something like that. That's a paraphrase. But they would just keep tabs on opponents of these major Projects often after learning about these meetings or whatnot from the company itself. So that, that was definitely an interesting detail. I think it speaks to the coziness of the BLM and this company, but also just how much they seem to want to get these things approved and keep an eye on opposition.

0:15:28 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah. Were there groups in particular that were singled out or.

0:15:34 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, the one I just described was based in Range Watch was holding a meeting and they were one of the BLM officials going to tune in kind of on his off time. They also be aware and keeping an eye on Patrick Donnelly from Center for Biological Diversity who's very outspoken about these issues. So those were two examples I got from the email, the FOIA emails from blm.

0:15:57 - (Chris Clarke): It seems like they decided on the right people to keep track of certainly some excellent work being done by both of those groups. And we've had both Patrick and Kevin on the show here.

0:16:09 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah. And it's interesting because it just, it just contrasts very sharply with how the BLM kind of treats and talks about Nevada energy. Some of the emails I got had the BLM's Nevada Renewable Energy chief describing, you know, NB Energy staff as NBLM officials, as one big happy family and writing to NV Energy employees with comments like, lol, you are the best or you're the man. Just a very overly friendly kind of communication for an agency that's supposed to be a impartial arbiter of these major policy decisions. So that that kind of stood out as, as a contrast.

0:16:47 - (Chris Clarke): And this isn't limited, according to your reporting to the Nevada field offices of the blm. Sounds like it goes higher up.

0:16:56 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah. I was looking at the Nevada State office mostly in my FOIA requests and the people who are higher up in the state. But the story really did focus on the Nevada blm. I didn't dig into other state BLM offices because I was focused on Nevada because it's ground zero basically for this energy boom.

0:17:19 - (Chris Clarke): But you had an interesting surprising nugget about Tracy Stone Manning in there.

0:17:24 - (Jimmy Tobias): There was a meeting that was held, it was in May 2020. Let me make sure I have the exact date right. It was May 2022 that involved both the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and BLM Director Tracy Stone Manning. They came to Nevada as they were announcing some pro renewable development policies and they actually held their meeting at NV Energy's headquarters and there were a bunch of different renewable companies were there and, and I got this email where BLM's director Tracy Stone Manning, in anticipation of the meeting and kind of reviewing the guest list was like, I suggest paring back the number of conservationists in the roundtable by a couple.

0:18:10 - (Jimmy Tobias): Don't get me wrong, we want renewable advocates representative. But not outnumbering the solar developers again speaks to their priorities and whose voices are getting the most attention as this transformation takes place.

0:18:25 - (Chris Clarke): You also covered conflict between the BLM and the National Park Service over Green Link West's route past or through the Tule Springs National Monument, the paleontological park there in North Vegas.

0:18:42 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, that's been a sticking point for the Greenlink west line. Tule Springs is a national park, so it, it's managed. There's a national monument, but it's managed by the Park Service in accordance with its very strict responsibilities about protecting lands and GreenLink West. Nevada Energy wants to run a portion of Greenlink west across the. Along the monuments boundaries, but within, within the Millennium Monuments borders. And the monument was designed to protect paleontological resources from the Ice Age fossils that include mammoths and dire wolves and American lions and priceless things. And. And the Park Service has been concerned that the line could impact these paleontological resources and wrote as much to blm.

0:19:33 - (Jimmy Tobias): And you can tell from some of these internal emails that BLM was not happy about this pushback from the Park Service about his plan and eventually the Park Service. I don't know exactly what happened. You might, perhaps they folded, perhaps they changed their tune. But they ultimately, you know, found that the line would not result in impairment of Tule Springs resources or unacceptable impacts. But they had written official comments prior to approval expressing concern. And one of the groups I talked to, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, is really worried. They do a lot of work protecting parks and holding the Interior Department and its agencies to the letter of the law. And they're very concerned about this and about the fact that a transmission line is going to get to run through the edge of a monument. And they told me sets a dangerous precedent, that they're considering litigation.

0:20:23 - (Jimmy Tobias): But that that was definitely a sticking point for Greenlink west and we'll see how that pans out. It's unclear at this time what exactly is going to happen.

0:20:32 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, I'm unable to share any particular insight into the, the motives of the Park Service in this whole thing, but I do know that on a larger scale, the Park Service, a lot of the folks that I talked to in the course of my last job with National Parks Conservation association, were reluctant to challenge the BLM much because Interior has adopted renewables build out as part of what they want to leave as a legacy for the next administration to try to undo or take credit for or whatever.

0:21:08 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, there's so much focus by these mainstream conservation groups on climate issues that land protection and things along those lines, when those two priorities come into conflict, seems to take a back seat. That seems to be a thing we're seeing more and more, and yet it's smaller groups that appear to be pushing back on these issues, but you don't see as much activity for from groups like the Wilderness Society or Sierra Club or whatnot.

0:21:40 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, the larger groups have for the last 15 years or so been caught on the horns of a dilemma where they don't want to appear to oppose renewable energy, even though they may have concerns about what's being replaced.

0:21:55 - (Chris Clarke): It's.

0:21:56 - (Chris Clarke): It's a tough decision for some folks, not so much for others. It's been really interesting to watch the unlikely alliance coming up, especially in western Nevada around the Green Link west territory, between people that you might charitably call radical environmentalists and some of the rural residents and powers that be in places like Pahrump and Amargosa Valley. Seems very much like the BLM is inadvertently creating an alliance between two rather divergent constituencies.

0:22:31 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, this is a major transformation of the state and the federal lands. And I was interested in digging into this because I think this is going to be a long term trend theme, whatever you want to say on public lands. There's given the push, including by mainstream environmental groups, to industrialize parts of federal lands in the name of climate change. I think if it's a sea change and it's going to lead to all sorts of strange alliances and conflicts and it'll be really interesting to see how it plays out. But it's a major change for our federal lands, especially in arid, dry places, to be sure.

0:23:12 - (Chris Clarke): What do you see changing after January 20th as far as this whole situation goes? Any semblance of a clue or is it just too hard to predict what the chaos agents that are coming into power are going to do?

0:23:26 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, it's hard to say. Like in the fall, Trump gave this speech at a roundtable for Latino voters, I think it was in October of this year. And he criticized solar development, industrial scale, utility scale, solar development, saying it looks like hell and it's just crazy putting all this steel and glass and wires in desert areas. And so he seems to have like an esthetic distaste or something for major solar development on undeveloped lands with given its scale and what it looks like, he says something about how it's going to hurt rabbits says stuff like that. But then it was his administration that approved the yellow pine project outside of Trump, and I think it's unclear for sure. I don't really think that his administration is going to get in the way of projects that are in the permitting pipeline.

0:24:19 - (Jimmy Tobias): They might change the overall direction of their policies and prioritize oil and gas over what the Biden administration was doing. But I didn't see them, like, stopping projects that are already on their way. I could be wrong, but as one of the people I interviewed told me, the clean energy industry plays both sides of the aisle. Public lands for renewable energy is pretty bipartisan and has been for a time.

0:24:41 - (Jimmy Tobias): I don't really see a major change. But metadata is interesting to see Trump criticize this kind of solar development on federal lands.

0:24:50 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah. When it comes right down to it, my sense is that the fact that the clean energy industry is an industry is going to be what dictates Trump's attitude toward them. Just being pro-business in general.

0:25:04 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah. And Trump's former deputy interior secretary, after leaving office, went to work for Nextera Energy or one of its subsidiaries, which is like one of the largest renewable energy companies in the world, and. And that person very well might get a job again. So it's just very bipartisan. It's like a revolving door, like so many industries, things like that.

0:25:25 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah.

0:25:26 - (Chris Clarke): And if NEPA comes under attack, that's only gonna make things worse in Nevada for sure. Yeah.

0:25:33 - (Jimmy Tobias): And I think there's no question that NEPA's gonna come under attack. You can already see Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, him in particular, criticizing NEPA. And it seems to be. There seems to be this idea that NEPA is some huge, daunting barrier to every development that gets proposed around the country, which is just not true. Very few proposals go through the EIS project. Very few ever get stopped. Sure, there might be delays. It's.

0:26:01 - (Jimmy Tobias): And yet there's this, like, fixation on destroying this very important public interest environmental law. But, yeah, I think you're right on that front for sure.

0:26:13 - (Chris Clarke): So what have I failed to ask you?

0:26:17 - (Jimmy Tobias): That's a tough one. I. I think one. One question I'm really interested in and which wasn't necessarily addressed in this story so much, but I am interested in the shift in the culture of major public lands organizations that now are supporting this vision for the public lands and don't seem to want to talk too much about the potential impact. One of the major concerns about Green Link north is its Impact on sage grouse.

0:26:45 - (Jimmy Tobias): This species has been through the ringer major declines over the last 20 years in their populations. Something like 40% decline. It's very disturbing. And Green Link north is going to cut through really important sage grouse habitat in north central Nevada. I think there's something like 58 leks within a 4-mile barrier proposed Green Link north route. And that's a lot of sage grouse, Lex. And this renewable energy boom is going to have major impacts on iconic western species and totally change landscapes, I think. And you don't really hear major environmental groups grappling with that. I will never forget going on the Wilderness Society's website, I don't know, a few years ago and this is the Wilderness Society.

0:27:34 - (Jimmy Tobias): And there was this beautiful sort of vista of mountains and rivers. It was an animated picture on their website and studded place all over this vista were like solar panels and wind farms. To me that really speaks to the mentality of public lands groups right now. And I wonder if they will live to regret it a little bit if some of these transformations really radically alter undeveloped federal land around the west.

0:28:02 - (Chris Clarke): Yeah, I remember There was about 15 years ago one of the local wilderness groups in Nevada had a campaign in which a volunteer of theirs hiked the pretty much the length of Nevada south to north. And this was along the path of a proposed transmission line that they were celebrating. It was the weirdest thing.

0:28:28 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, yeah. And I obviously we need transmission lines in the country but I think there's a lot of questions about where they should go. And for instance, a lot of people think Green Link north should be pushed north along the interstate where there's already an interstate rather than along Highway 50 which is known as the loneliest road in America. I drove it for this story. Very little development along that route. And beautiful landscape. Absolutely beautiful landscape, sage grass country, very important wildlife habitat.

0:29:01 - (Jimmy Tobias): They're choosing that route for this massive transmission line rather than i80. And I think it will generate avoidable conflict for sure. These are multi billion dollar transmission lines. So there's a lot of money at stake. And NB Energy obviously is a very powerful company in the state of Nevada and owned by one of the richest men in the country. So yeah, it speaks. I think this story to me speaks to who stands to benefit most from this build out and how it's being approached by the federal agencies with sort of tacit support from a lot of environmental groups.

0:29:40 - (Chris Clarke): Yep.

0:29:42 - (Chris Clarke): I know that this is a tough question to ask somebody that's a freelance journalist, but anything you're working on that. You can share with us at this point?

0:29:50 - (Jimmy Tobias): Sure. I am working on a long-term investigation into the BLM and Forest Service federal grazing program around the country. The database project that will it'll take a while but it's underway so that's exciting. And also digging into Utah's lawsuit aimed at gaining control of federal lands and I'm interested in who's behind that lawsuit and what its potential is. But just as with this project, as with a lot of my projects, these are going to be document-based investigations trying to get FOIA documents and things like that to really break some new ground. Both of those are longer term projects that probably won't be out for many months. But yeah, those are two of the bigger public Lance related ones that I'm working on right now.

0:30:39 - (Chris Clarke): Both of those are fascinating and I hope you'll think about coming on to talk to us about those topics as well.

0:30:46 - (Jimmy Tobias): Yeah, anytime.

0:30:47 - (Chris Clarke): Jimmy, it's been a real pleasure interviewing you. I know our relationship has gone in the other direction in the past, but I'm very grateful to you for joining us here on 90 miles from Needles.

0:30:59 - (Jimmy Tobias): Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

0:31:30 - (Chris Clarke): And that wraps up another episode of 90 Miles from Needles, the Desert Protection Podcast. I want to thank Jimmy Tobias for speaking with us about his really important article on Inside Climate News. Sadly, nothing in the article surprised me, but it's really important to report on this stuff. Thanks as well to our newest donor, Richard Lee, to Joe Jeffrey, our voiceover guy, and Martine Mancia, podcast artwork creator. Our theme song, Moody Western is by Bright side Studio.

0:32:05 - (Chris Clarke): Other music in this episode by Bright Light. This podcast and our mothership, the Desert Advocacy Media Network, are taking full advantage of the opening up of blue sky as an alternative to that other thing, the artist formerly known as Twitter and formerly not known as a cesspool of fascism. You can find us there at 90 MFN BSky Social. Also want to thank my dog Hart for providing some wonderful snoring noises in the background during our interview with Jimmy Tobias. Definitely gave it that down home feeling.

0:32:50 - (Chris Clarke): If you listen with headset on, you might just be able to hear it. I hope that the next few days are full of joy for you with family, whether birth or chosen or on your own. Solitude is a really good thing. If you can where you live, go check out the winter constellations at night. Most of my camping in the desert before I actually moved here was done somewhere in the cooler section of the year and I got so familiar with that parade of winter constellations the Pleiades and Taurus.

0:33:28 - (Chris Clarke): There is a star cluster in Taurus called the Hyades, which I didn't know until about 10 years ago. Orion and Canis Major.

0:33:40 - (Chris Clarke): Plus there's just so much extra time to look at stars. We're coming into the season where the Quadrantids meteor shower is going to start picking up probably in the next week. Peaks on January 4, which is why it's called the Quadrantids. It's a nice birthday present for me, got to say. Anyway, whether you celebrate or just endure the next couple of weeks, please take care of yourself, hold fast to your boundaries, hug some friends, indulge in a little bit too much food and drink, as we say so long to 2024, and we will see you at the next watering hole.

0:34:29 - (Chris Clarke): Bye.

0:36:37 - (Joe Geoffrey): 90 miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Meeting Media Network.