Sammy Roth

2 weeks ago | latimes.com | Sammy Roth

An unprecedented heat wave is baking Seattle, and Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital is overwhelmed. Doctors scramble to treat people with heat stroke and pregnant women going into early labor due to triple-digit temperatures. The emergency room runs out of ice. Elective surgeries are canceled. Grey Sloan is so inundated — partly due to power outages at another hospital — that it’s forced to turn away patients.

3 weeks ago | latimes.com | Sammy Roth

As we drove north along Highway 395 — passing the salty remains of Owens Lake, the Museum of Western Film History, the geothermal plant outside Mammoth Lakes that supplies 24/7 clean energy to San Bernardino County — I felt certain we’d found the northernmost reaches of Southern California. It was Memorial Day weekend, and my wife and I were headed to a U.S. Forest Service campground in the White Mountains, 225 miles as the crow flies from downtown L.A.’s Union Station.

4 weeks ago | latimes.com | Sammy Roth

Long before Clayton Kershaw donned No. 22 and Fernando Valenzuela wore No. 34, another number told fans it was time for Dodger baseball: 76. Union Oil Co., the 76 gasoline brand’s former owner, helped finance Dodger Stadium’s construction. The brand’s current owner, Phillips 66, remains a major sponsor. Through six World Series titles, orange-and-blue 76 logos have been a constant presence at Chavez Ravine. They tower above the scoreboards and grace the outfield walls.

1 month ago | latimes.com | Sammy Roth

Donald Trump had just been elected president when I first visited the sprawling Wyoming ranch of conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz in late 2016. But my tour guides didn’t let President Trump’s well-known disdain for wind power stop them from sharing their story: With Anschutz’s fortune behind them, and huge profits ahead, they were preparing to build America’s largest wind farm. America’s future was renewable. When I visited again in 2022, their story was the same: Wind turbines, all the way.

1 month ago | latimes.com | Sammy Roth

The radiation containment domes at Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station were, truth be told, pretty boring to look at: giant mounds of concrete, snap a picture, move on. The enormous cooling towers and evaporation ponds were marginally more interesting — all that recycled water, baking in the Sonoran Desert. You know what really struck my fancy, though? The paintings on conference room walls.