The largest refinery in the Midwest will have an unpalatable choice if President Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian oil: Pay more for the crude that it transforms into gasoline and diesel, or slash production. Both options threaten to increase prices at the pump, albeit modestly if Mr. Trump sticks with the 10 percent rate he announced this month. It is not clear whether the tariff will take effect after Mr. Trump decided to hold it in abeyance until at least early March. Yet this refinery, built around 1889 on the south shore of Lake Michigan, near Chicago, is a reminder of just how difficult it can be to undo trade ties that go back decades. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Trump, like many American leaders before him, appears to be yearning for a kind of energy independence that experts say is impractical and would not benefit individuals or the oil industry. “We don’t need their oil and gas,” Mr. Trump said last month, referring to Canada. “We have more than anybody.” It boils down to this: No matter how much oil the United States pumps — and it already is the top producer in the world by far — its refineries were designed to run on a blend of different types of oil. Many can’t function well without the darker, denser, cheaper crude that is hard to find domestically. Canada is flush with that oil, known as heavy crude. And facilities like this one, BP’s refinery in Whiting, Ind., were built around that supply. Companies have little reason to spend billions of dollars reconfiguring their systems for trade policy that may be fleeting. Not to mention there is uncertainty about the trajectory of global demand for gasoline and diesel, which some experts think could peak in the next decade as more people buy electric cars as well as trucks that run on natural gas and other fuels. “You can’t turn the Titanic on a dime, and the industry is kind of the same way,” said Rick Weyen, a retired refining executive who worked at the Whiting refinery for several years in the 1980s and ’90s. Whiting, a facility of tanks, towers and more than 800 miles of pipelines, is among the most dependent in the country on Canadian oil. On any given day, between 65 percent and three-quarters of the crude flowing through it is of the dark, viscous variety found in the oil sands of Alberta. The rest is lighter, and much of it can come from Texas, New Mexico and other U.S. states. BP can tweak its recipe — but only so much. Too little of the viscous stuff and the company would need to cut back its production of the fuels that power cars, trucks and airplanes. The refinery normally makes enough gasoline in a day to fuel more than seven million cars, or about 3 percent of the gas-powered vehicles on American roads. The oil and gas industry, which was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters in last year’s election, has urged him to exempt energy from the tariffs on Canada, saying the taxes could cause prices at the pump to rise. (During the campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to slash people’s energy bills by more than half.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s not as simple as switching things out,” said Chet Thompson, chief executive of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association. In a sign that Mr. Trump heard the industry, which gave more than $75 million to his campaign, he lowered the planned tariff on Canadian energy imports to 10 percent, from 25 percent. At that level, some consumers may see gasoline prices rise a few cents, but analysts said much of the added cost would be absorbed by Canadian oil producers and U.S. refiners that are effectively locked into doing business with each other. The effects could be more severe if Canada were to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s trade policies by making its oil more expensive, such as by imposing an export tax. A concurrent tariff on Mexican oil, even at 25 percent, is widely expected to be less disruptive on this side of the border because the United States imports less Mexican oil and the Gulf Coast refineries that use it have access to more alternatives than the refineries in the Midwest. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Hours before the tariffs were set to take effect, Mr. Trump put them on hold for at least 30 days in exchange for stepped-up border security measures from Canada and Mexico. A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said in a statement that the deals demonstrated the president’s “commitment to using every lever of executive power to put Americans and America First.” Amid the uncertainty, Kelsi Thomas, a 23-year-old special-education classroom assistant, was trying to figure out what a North American trade war might mean for her. Gas prices — $3.10 a gallon last week at her local Love’s outside Chicago — were top of mind. “He was supposed to be bringing the prices down,” she said of Mr. Trump. Refining companies, many of which reported year-end earnings in recent weeks, have sought to reassure investors that they are prepared come what may. “Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” Maryann Mannen, chief executive of the fuel-making giant Marathon Petroleum, told Wall Street analysts last week. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s likely,” Ms. Mannen added, “that we would see cost increases. We believe that the majority of that will ultimately be borne by the producer and then, frankly, to a lesser extent, the consumer.” The day after Mr. Trump said he was putting the levies on hold, Marathon Petroleum’s stock price climbed nearly 7 percent. BP invited a reporter and a photographer to tour the Whiting refinery last week but canceled a planned interview with the refinery’s top executive. In a statement, the executive, Chris DellaFranco, said, “We plan for every scenario.” As with so much else these days, people’s feelings about the prospect of tariffs often track how they see the president himself. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Connie Salas, a Republican who owns a flower shop in Whiting, brushed off the risk that she may soon have to pay more for plants like azaleas and cyclamen, or to fill up her delivery truck. “The fact that the prices have been ranging around the $3 mark, if it goes up to $3.50, no big deal,” Ms. Salas, 77, said of gasoline. “Whatever’s got to be done to make the country better is fine with me.” Humberto Martinez, a retired Whiting refinery worker, expressed more concern about Mr. Trump’s trade policy. He voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris. “My pension from BP doesn’t go up,” Mr. Martinez, 75, said. “What I’m scared of is I’m not going to be able to afford the same lifestyle.”

Ford Motor could be forced to lay off employees if the Trump administration ends subsidies and other financial support for electric vehicle manufacturing, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday. Ford has invested heavily in factories to produce batteries and electric vehicles in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, Jim Farley, the Ford chief executive, said at a conference in New York. If Republicans repeal Biden-era legislation that allocated billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for the projects, Mr. Farley said, “many of those jobs will be at risk.” Mr. Farley was also sharply critical of President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on cars and components from Mexico and Canada. Ford makes several vehicles in Mexico, including the Maverick pickup and Mustang Mach-E electric S.U.V., and engines in Canada. “A 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Mr. Farley said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Ford. “It gives free rein to South Korean and Japanese and European companies that are bringing one and a half to two million vehicles into the U.S. that wouldn’t be subject to those Mexican and Canadian tariffs.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Farley’s remarks at the conference, which was organized by Wolfe Research, offered a rare example of a corporate executive calling into question Mr. Trump’s policies or statements. In most cases executives have either offered praise or kept quiet, apparently out of fear they could prompt reprisals from the president. Even as he took issue with specific policies, Mr. Farley commended how Mr. Trump “has talked a lot about making our U.S. auto industry stronger, bringing more production here or innovation in the U.S.” This is especially important now, the executive said, because a “global street fight” is taking place in the auto industry as Chinese manufacturers expand overseas. “If this administration can achieve that, it would be one of, I think one of the most signature accomplishments,” Mr. Farley said. But he added, “So far what we’re seeing is a lot of costs and a lot of chaos.” Mr. Farley’s comments also highlighted a political quandary that Republicans will face as they try to reverse Democratic policies designed to promote electric vehicles. Much of the investment in factories has gone to states and congressional districts represented by Republicans whose constituents would be the ones to lose their jobs.

On Jan. 19, almost two weeks after the Eaton fire broke out near Altadena, Calif., technicians for Southern California Edison began testing electrical equipment near the origin of the blaze. They soon noticed small white flashes appearing on high-voltage transmission lines when power was being restored — signs that the system was functioning abnormally. The incident is one of several irregularities that Edison has been reviewing as it examines its electrical system in the wake of the deadly fire, said Pedro J. Pizarro, president and chief executive of Edison International, Southern California Edison’s parent company, in an interview Wednesday. He cautioned that the findings were part of the utility’s ongoing investigation and did not provide any conclusive evidence about whether faulty electrical equipment had ignited the blaze. But the flashes, which could be similar to ones captured on video near electrical equipment just moments before the fire broke out on Jan. 7, add to a growing pool of evidence linking the utility to the possible origin of the fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and businesses. It may take months for an official cause to be determined, but if Edison is found to be at fault, it could have sweeping consequences for how victims will be compensated — as well as how the utility, the state’s second-largest investor-owned utility, continues to operate. “While we do not yet know what caused the Eaton wildfire, SCE is exploring every possibility in its investigation, including the possibility that SCE’s equipment was involved,” Mr. Pizarro said. Edison filed its latest findings in a report to state regulators on Thursday. In a separate filing Thursday, Edison said its equipment also might be associated with the Hurst fire, which began the same day as the Eaton fire and burned about 800 acres in the Sylmar neighborhood, north of Altadena. Critics of the utility question why a comprehensive look at the cause of the Eaton fire took so long. They added that the mounting evidence suggested that the utility’s shareholders should be forced to cover the cost of damage from the blaze. “Clearly Edison should have known that when you experience flashes on a line, that could cause a fire, in the exact place where the fire started,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit group that represents taxpayers and consumers. “I don’t understand how they could not put two and two together.” A spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission said that the agency did not determine the cause of wildfires, but that it would review whether a utility violated any rules or regulations after it had been found responsible for causing a fire. Utility equipment has been the source of some of California’s most deadly and devastating wildfires. After a series of blazes in the northern part of the state, including the Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018, Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, filed for bankruptcy. For much of the last decade, California has worked to reduce wildfires set off by electrical equipment by requiring the state’s investor-owned utilities to develop prevention plans that have included moving wires underground, installing weather stations to track storms and even deliberately cutting power to customers during dangerous conditions. As Edison began reviewing its data after the Eaton fire, it noticed that its system was under strain from 100-mile-an-hour winds that night, but it did not initially find any direct evidence suggesting its equipment was at fault. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The utility later expanded its internal investigation after The New York Times published a video recorded outside an Arco gas station in Altadena that captured flashes in the area of transmission towers in Eaton Canyon where the fire began on Jan. 7. The flashes occurred in short succession — one at 6:10 p.m. and then another three seconds later — before flames burst out below the towers. “After we saw the video, we went back and said, ‘Hey, are there things we just don’t understand here, and we should bring back into the fold?’” Mr. Pizarro said. The timing of the two flashes coincided with data released by Whisker Labs, a Maryland technology company that operates sensors in homes to help predict and prevent residential fires, that identified two huge transmission faults that originated in the Altadena area. The electrical disruptions were so strong that sensors registered the faults as far away as Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City. Edison said it was now looking at several factors that it initially had not considered relevant to the fire in Eaton Canyon, including electrical faults at 6:11 p.m. Jan. 7 on the transmission line near a substation several miles from the origin point of the Eaton fire. It seemed a mystery, Mr. Pizarro said, that electrical problems so far from the origin point of the fire would play a role in igniting it. The utility is considering whether an inactive transmission line might have sparked if electrified equipment nearby caused the line to energize. Mr. Pizarro said the utility had found signs of damage from arcing — when electricity jumps from one place to another and lines can dangerously flash and spark — on some inactive equipment. But, he added, it is unclear whether that damage occurred before or after the fire. “What else happened in the system?” Mr. Pizarro said. “What else can we put together to try and concatenate some sequence of events?”

The Environmental Protection Agency is demoting career employees who oversee scientific research, the enforcement of pollution laws, hazardous waste cleanup and the agency’s human resources department and will replace them with political appointees, according to two people familiar with the approach. The move would give Trump administration loyalists more influence over aspects of the agency that were traditionally led by nonpartisan experts who have served across Republican and Democratic administrations. It would also make it easier for the Trump administration to bypass Congress. While those formally overseeing sections of the E.P.A. must be confirmed by the Senate, the new appointees would be able to assume the role of acting department heads, circumventing the need for congressional approval. “As is common practice and has become more prevalent across administrations, E.P.A. updated its organizational structure to match other federal agencies,” Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The E.P.A. is emerging as a case study in the lessons that Mr. Trump has learned from his first term in office, when career staff members often thwarted his administration’s efforts to sideline scientists and repeal air and water protections. Mr. Trump’s allies promised that in a second term they would be more prepared to swiftly begin dismantling the E.P.A., the agency that played a central role in the Biden administration’s strategy to combat climate change. Mr. Trump has stocked the agency with political appointees who have worked as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries. They include David Fotouhi, the nominee for deputy administrator, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator; and Nancy Beck, a longtime chemical industry lobbyist, who is serving as a senior E.P.A. adviser on chemical safety and pollution. At the same time, there have been aggressive moves to deplete the E.P.A. work force. In recent days, the Trump administration warned more than 1,100 agency employees who had been hired within the past year that they could be “immediately” terminated at any time. The change to the senior management ranks affects four key areas of the E.P.A. They are the Office of Research and Development, the agency’s scientific research arm; the Office of Enforcement and Compliance, which is responsible for enforcing the country’s environmental laws; the Office of Land and Emergency Management, which oversees cleanups at some of the nation’s most contaminated lands and responds to environmental emergencies; and the Office of Mission Support, which manages human resources but also grants and contracts. Until the Trump administration, career employees held the second-in-command positions of “principal deputy assistant administrator.” Those career staff members automatically became the acting heads of their divisions in the absence of a Senate-confirmed assistant administrator to lead it. Last week the people serving in those roles were informed by Trump officials that their job titles would be changed, according to the two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about personnel matters. The employees were told that their salaries and benefits would not change but that they would be moved to the position of “deputy assistant administrator,” which is effectively a demotion, the people said. The change is expected to take effect this week. So far, no political appointees have been named as replacements. Many of the emerging changes at the E.P.A. were mapped out in Project 2025, a conservative policy playbook that Mr. Trump has said he had not read. It calls for putting in place “reform-minded” political appointees to lead virtually all parts of the agency, including the scientific and enforcement functions. It is not without precedent to install political appointees in roles where they can carry out the president’s agenda without Senate approval. During the Biden administration, Joseph Goffman served as the principal deputy assistant administrator of the E.P.A. office overseeing air pollution. He held that job for three years, helping to write strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and automobiles. He was finally confirmed by the Senate in January 2024. Critics said the difference was that while E.P.A.’s air and water offices manage the bulk of federal regulation and are likely to reflect the president’s priorities, the moves from the Trump administration inject partisanship in segments of the agency that had been neutral. David Uhlmann, who led E.P.A. enforcement under the Biden administration, said of the moves that “when viewed alongside everything else taking place, they are yet another unfortunate attack on public servants who have dedicated their careers to public health and environmental protection.”

The Senate confirmed Chris Wright to lead the U.S. Department of Energy on Monday, putting the former oil executive in a key position to help shape President Trump’s energy policies. Mr. Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking firm, was confirmed by a vote of 59 to 38, with support from all Republicans present and a smaller number of Democrats. He would be the 17th secretary of energy, a position that was created in 1977. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. He also told Democrats that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of renewable energy like wind and solar power. At the same time, Mr. Wright said he would “work tirelessly” to support Mr. Trump’s “bold” energy agenda. The president has frequently dismissed climate change as a hoax, disparaged wind and solar power and said he wants to expand the use of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is driving climate change. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Energy Department plays a central role in developing new energy technologies. The agency oversees a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research as well as a powerful loan office that has backed dozens of low-carbon energy projects, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee and two giant nuclear reactors in Georgia. Mr. Wright would also oversee approvals of liquefied gas export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to slow, angering industry groups. Mr. Trump has already ordered the Energy Department to restart reviews of proposed export facilities. The Energy Department is a sprawling agency. About 80 percent of the department’s $52 billion annual budget goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting research in areas like high-energy physics. Under the Biden administration, the department aggressively supported new clean energy technologies such as advanced nuclear power, enhanced geothermal energy, green hydrogen fuels, next-generation batteries and more. Backed by new funding from Congress, it issued tens of billions in loans and grants to everything from firms making low-carbon cement to power companies building new transmission lines. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright mostly declined to go into details about how he would run the department. Some conservative groups have urged Mr. Wright to reorient or even shutter the agency’s Loan Programs Office, which was given roughly $400 billion in loan authority by Congress to bring promising energy technologies to market. Under the Biden administration, the office finalized more than $60.6 billion in loans and loan guarantees to companies that were mining lithium, restarting a shuttered nuclear plant, converting wind and solar power into hydrogen fuels and more. It also issued $47 billion in conditional loans that have not been finalized. As of Jan. 17, there were still 160 companies seeking more than $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees. But the loan office’s work has largely been paused since Mr. Trump took office, and it is unclear what will happen to those applications. Most major environmental groups and many Democrats opposed Mr. Wright’s confirmation, saying that he downplayed the risks of a warming planet. In a social media post in 2023, Mr. Wright wrote, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” On a podcast last year, he said that climate change would have “a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.” On podcasts and in speeches, Mr. Wright has frequently made a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need access to oil, gas and coal to enjoy the benefits of modern life that rich nations take for granted. Still, some Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to approve Mr. Wright’s nomination. They included Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, as well as Angus King, an independent from Maine who normally caucuses with Democrats. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “While I do not agree with Mr. Wright on a number of issues, he has committed to working with us in good faith” on issues like investing in national labs and building out high-voltage power lines, Mr. Heinrich said last month. Mr. Wright graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software to measure the motion of fluid beneath the Earth’s surface. The software helped bring about a commercial shale-gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has worked with others on geothermal energy and small, modular nuclear reactors. Mr. Wright holds 2.6 million shares in the company, which were worth roughly $47 million based on Monday’s closing stock price. In a written statement to the Senate he promised to step down from Liberty Energy and divest his holdings within 90 days after being confirmed. According to his ethics agreement, he is scheduled to get paid his last bonus from the company in March.

Fire and wind are certain to shape the future of Los Angeles as the world warms. Los Angeles had started taking steps to prepare. But there are lessons it can learn from other cities adapting to extreme fire weather: managing yards; taking care of neighbors; making it easier to get out of harm’s way. One big challenge, among many, is that plans like these need to be widely adopted. One home is only as safe as the home next door. “If your neighbor doesn’t do anything, and you do, if that home burns it will create so much radiant heat, yours will burn too,” said Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, Mont., a company that advises cities on reducing wildfire damage risk. Neighbors matter. Building codes and zoning rules matter. But perhaps most of all, money matters. Building for an age of fire can be expensive, and often out of reach for many homeowners living in fire-prone communities. Look hard at the landscape Boulder County, Colo., has learned some big lessons from recent fires. Pine needles and debris around a house quickly spread flames. Juniper bushes explode in fire. In fact, county officials call junipers “gasoline plants.” Firewood stuffed under a deck can ignite and destroy a house. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The county has spent several years persuading people to clear debris and rip out junipers. Voters have agreed to a sales tax hike to help pay for it. Los Angeles has its own problem plant: palms. Many palm species, once they catch fire, are very hard to put out. In fire-prone areas, they should be avoided entirely, according to the Los Angeles County fire department. San Diego county prohibits greenery — even shrubs — around a five foot perimeter of a building and requires that tree canopies be at least 10 feet away. Berkeley, Calif., sends fire inspectors into its most fire-prone neighborhoods to suss out signs of danger: dead brush less than five feet from a house; flammable vegetation that leans over the fence line and threatens a neighbor’s property; high shrubs that can send flames racing up a tree. There are constraints. Live oaks are protected by law, which means they can’t be cut down. And local communities like Berkeley are still waiting for California state officials to issue regulations to implement a 2023 law designed to minimize fire damage by prescribing landscape-management standards. The city is due to tighten its regulations in the coming weeks, requiring homeowners to keep a five-foot fireproof perimeter around every house in the most fire-prone neighborhoods in the hills. That means no shrubs, no propane tanks, no wood mulch. Violations will be fined; the City Council has yet to determine how much. “If I can hold a lighter to it and it can smoke and flame, it shouldn’t be there,” said Colin Arnold, the assistant fire chief responsible for the city’s most fire-prone areas on the edge of the wilderness, known as the wildland urban interface Build safer houses Houses are flammable, but it’s possible to make them less flammable. Concrete, stucco, and engineered wood are better than old-fashioned wood frames. A few architects, including Abeer Sweis, in Santa Monica, work with compressed soil, also known as rammed earth, which offers both protection from fire and avoids the emissions of concrete. Roofs made of clay tiles, concrete or metal hold up well to flames. Laminated glass windows can reduce the radiant heat that presses up against a house during a fire. Design matters, too. Eaves and overhangs can trap embers, which is why architects building in fire-prone areas like them to be sealed. At a time when insurance coverage is becoming increasingly hard to procure in fire-prone communities, Mitchell Rocheleau, an architect based in Irvine, Calif., says fortifying your home is a “physical insurance policy.” Vents are frequent culprits. Low-cost fixes, like fire-resistant vents with mesh screens, can keep big embers from flying in, but they’re not always effective, Ms. Sweis said, which is why she prefers vents that are coated with a material that melts in the heat and closes up. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Building codes increasingly mandate noncombustible roofs and siding. (California has among the strictest.) The problem, though, is that most homes in the United States were built before modern building codes. Upgrading an existing house for the age of fire means getting rid of flammable siding and roofs. That’s an expensive proposition. Boast about improvements Think of it as a fire-smart version of keeping up with the Joneses. Boulder County has a way for homeowners to get certified by a county program, Wildfire Partners, for fireproofing practices like junking junipers, choosing less flammable shrubs, installing a fire-resistant roof or slathering fire-resistant sealant on a deck. Certification comes with a yard sign to display. It’s a way to nudge others in the neighborhood to adopt similar practices. There’s also a potential reward. Certification can be a way to not lose homeowner’s insurance, which is increasingly a risk in many communities in the American West. “The cost of retrofitting is very real,” Ashley Stolzmann, a county commissioner said. “The cost of losing insurance is also very real.” Upgrade dangerous power lines Power lines and utility poles have been responsible for some of California’s most destructive fires in recent years. Much of that infrastructure was built in the 1960s and 1970s and is in urgent need of repair. Utilities have faced a barrage of lawsuits in the aftermath of some of those fires, including in recent days when residents of Altadena sued Southern California Edison claiming that the utility’s equipment set off the Eaton Fire that destroyed 5,000 buildings in the area. (Edison said it is investigating the cause of the fires.) A range of fixes are possible, from fire-resistant poles to burying electricity lines (very expensive) to covering them in a protective layer (less expensive but less safe). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set aside $3.5 billion for electricity grid upgrades. That’s a fraction of the $250 billion price tag of the latest Los Angeles fires. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Rethink roads Cul-de-sacs and narrow, winding streets are a hallmark of many neighborhoods pressed up against wilderness, including the Berkeley Hills. That’s a problem when people need to get out, and first responders need to get in. “There’s nowhere to put new roads,” Mr. Arnold said. “It’s a very densely packed community built without evacuation in mind.” If you can’t widen roads, you can keep them clear for first responders to get in and out. The Los Angeles Fire Department prohibits street parking in some neighborhoods on windy days, when fire risk is high. Rancho Santa Fe, a wealthy suburb of San Diego, has tried to solve the problem by keeping most of its residential roads clear at all times. No street parking is allowed if the street isn’t wide enough for fire trucks to get in and out. Know when to leave Bushfires have long been common in hot, dry southeastern Australia. But none scarred its people like the Black Saturday fires that broke out in Victoria state in February, 2009. The blazes killed more than 170 people and led to a rewriting of the state’s evacuation protocols. On days of high fire risk, people who live in forested communities are encouraged to leave their homes before there are signs of smoke and flame. Warnings are broadcast on television. Residents are encouraged to have the official state-government emergency-preparedness app, which highlights what areas should empty out when. A look at the app on a recent Thursday morning showed 10 notices across the state, from “leave immediately” warnings in some places to “monitor conditions” elsewhere. Los Angeles residents, by contrast, received erroneous evacuation warnings by text message on the some of the worst fire days. More reliable was a private app built by a nonprofit group. “We want people making good decisions before the fire rather than bad decisions during the fire,” said Luke Heagerty, a spokesman for the state control center. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A handful of schools and fire stations are designated as community fire refuge facilities. And for those people who stay behind until a fire reaches their homes, there is the ominously named Bushfire Place of Last Resort. Usually it’s an open field with no trees or structures to catch fire. But as the county fire authority starkly warns on its website, the Bushfire Place of Last Resort sites “do not guarantee safety.” Build more homes Los Angeles has long faced an acute need for more housing. For years, it’s met the demand by allowing development in fire-prone areas and allowing homeowners to rebuild after fires have swept through those areas. The latest fires supersized the need. An estimated 10,000 homes were destroyed, leaving tens of thousands of people in need of shelter and driving up rents and home prices in one of the country’s most expensive real estate markets. And so among the toughest choices facing Los Angeles now is where to build homes that won’t easily go up in flames. “You have two options, both of which are politically very difficult, especially right after the fires,” said Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at the University of California Los Angeles. One is to restrict development in fire-prone areas. The other is to allow more dense housing in less hazardous areas in the flatlands, in neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes. That’s been “a political non-starter,” Mr. Manville said.

Oil and gas companies in the United States are bracing for the possibility that President Trump will thrust their businesses into disarray and will drive up prices at the pump by imposing 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico. The United States is the world’s largest oil producer, but the country’s refineries are designed to turn a mix of different types of oil into fuels like gasoline and diesel. Roughly 60 percent of the crude oil that the United States imports comes from Canada, and about 7 percent comes from Mexico. Many refineries are set up to use those particular imports and cannot easily switch to oil from other places. Analysts are not sure just how Mr. Trump’s tariffs might ripple through the oil market — and who would bear the added expenses. The costs may not be significant if the tariffs are in place only temporarily, or if the administration makes it easy for refiners to obtain waivers to keep buying Canadian or Mexican crude without paying extra. Mr. Trump has said that the tariffs would take effect on Saturday. He has indicated at various points that oil might be subject to less severe penalties. On Friday, in response to a question about oil imported from Canada, Mr. Trump said he probably would reduce the planned tariff to 10 percent for that commodity. He previously suggested that he might exempt oil from the tariffs entirely. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The oil and gas industry was one of the biggest supporters of Mr. Trump during the 2024 election, giving more than $75 million to his campaign, and the president has made helping the industry, such as by loosening regulations, a key policy priority. He also promised to reduce energy costs for consumers. A White House spokesman did not directly address how placing tariffs on energy imports would align with Mr. Trump’s goal of reducing prices. “His promises focus on building on the achievements of his first term and reversing the setbacks of the previous four years,” the spokesman, Harrison W. Fields, said in a statement before Mr. Trump’s Friday remarks. Among those likely to take a hit if Mr. Trump does not exempt fossil fuels are Canadian oil producers and U.S. refiners, particularly those in the Midwest that process a lot of Canadian oil and lack a ready substitute. American consumers in regions that depend on oil from Canada also could see slightly higher prices at the pump, particularly if fuel makers were to respond by cutting production. If Mr. Trump were to move forward with 25 percent tariffs on oil, gasoline prices in the Midwest could climb 15 to 20 cents a gallon, with more muted effects in other parts of the country, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. The United States also buys natural gas, electricity and uranium — an element used to make fuel for nuclear power plants — from Canada. “It’s going to be very, very messy” if Mr. Trump moves ahead with tariffs, Mr. Kloza said. “We haven’t dealt with something like this, certainly not in the modern era.” Editors’ Picks Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? A Long Life in Harlem, Made Possible by an Affordable Apartment Kristen Stewart Thinks the Critics at Cannes Are Being Too Nice Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Already, refining is a tougher business than it was a couple of years ago, partly because U.S. demand for diesel has weakened. Lower profit margins in fuelmaking weighed on the fourth-quarter results of the two largest U.S. oil companies, which reported earnings on Friday. Exxon Mobil’s profit for the final three months of 2024 inched lower to $7.61 billion, from $7.63 billion a year earlier. Production growth in places like West Texas helped to offset a more challenging market for refining. The company’s results exceeded forecasts from analysts surveyed by FactSet. “We have done the hard work to make sure that we’re competitively advantaged, and that’s going to hold us in good stead in any market environment,” Kathy Mikells, Exxon’s chief financial officer, said. Chevron’s fourth-quarter profit rose around 43 percent year-over-year, to $3.24 billion, but it came up short of Wall Street’s expectations. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The average price of regular gasoline on Friday was $3.11 a gallon nationally, according to AAA, the motor club, in line with prices this time last year. In the Midwest, gasoline is generally cheaper than the national average. Mr. Trump, in his first two weeks in office, has repeatedly invoked the threat of tariffs. Some policy analysts say that he is using the threats as a negotiating tool to spur countries to do what he wants. Last weekend, he announced 25 percent tariffs against another U.S. ally, Colombia, after its president balked at accepting U.S. military planes carrying deported immigrants. Within hours, Colombia acceded and Mr. Trump reversed course. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s main trade group, has urged the administration to exempt fossil fuels from any tariffs. It said in a December letter that such tariffs “would directly undermine energy affordability and availability for consumers while eroding the U.S. oil and natural gas industry’s competitiveness.” Most oil produced in the United States is, in the telling of industry experts, akin to a light beer, while the crude imported from Canada and Mexico is more like a thick molasses. Refineries are set up to use a combination of the light and heavy oils. U.S. fuel makers did not appear to be stocking up on Canadian oil, Mr. Kloza of OPIS said. Valero Energy, one of the largest U.S. oil refining companies, has been planning for a wide range of scenarios and has flexibility because many of its refineries are along the Gulf Coast, near ports where oil can be imported from around the world, Gary Simmons, the chief operating officer, told financial analysts on a conference call on Thursday. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Eventually, though, the company might need to cut production if buying heavier oil were to become difficult, Mr. Simmons added. Chevron also said on Friday that it recognized $715 million in severance charges in the final three months of the year, signaling job cuts on the horizon. “We’ll see some organizational restructuring, and that will result in some changes to our work force,” Mike Wirth, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview. Chevron has not disclosed how many employees could be affected. Employment in the U.S. oil industry has fallen roughly 25 percent over the past decade, even as oil and gas production have soared to record highs. Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, provided an update Friday on the company’s plans to supply power to data centers, saying Exxon could have a power plant running by 2028. On Tuesday, Chevron said that it, too, planned to sell electricity to data centers, saying it could have a power plant operating by the end of 2027.

Doug Burgum, a promoter of oil and gas, was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday to lead the Interior Department, a role in which he will oversee drilling and mining policies on federal lands and waters. The 79-18 vote for Mr. Burgum puts him in charge of nearly 500 million acres of public land, 1.7 billion acres of offshore waters, and more than 70,000 employees across the country tasked with protecting wildlife and endangered species, managing national parks and maintaining tribal lands. He is expected to be a key player to implement President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda that calls for making it easier and cheaper for oil companies to operate, and loosening protections for wildlife as well as easing limits on air and water pollution. In addition to leading the Interior Department, Mr. Burgum is also to run a White House council charged with encouraging more oil and gas development. The role of the council is still undefined but it is expected to help meet Mr. Trump’s goal of selling more American oil and gas to Europe and Asia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT During the presidential campaign, Mr. Burgum acted as a conduit between Mr. Trump and the oil and gas industry. He helped gather fossil fuel executives at Mar-a-Lago for a now-famous dinner, during which Mr. Trump suggested that industry leaders raise $1 billion for his campaign. He told the executives they would save far more than that in tax breaks and legal fees after he eliminated climate policies, according to several attendees who requested anonymity to discuss the private event. Mr. Burgum’s role and his close ties to oil billionaires, including Harold Hamm, the founder of oil giant Continental Resources, drew criticism from many Democrats. In written responses to lawmakers, Mr. Burgum sidestepped a question from Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, about whether he played a role in meetings between oil executives and Mr. Trump during the campaign where both public policy and campaign contributions were discussed. Mr. Burgum wrote that Mr. Trump’s “energy dominance message is consistent regardless of venue.” Republicans expressed relief that Mr. Burgum would reverse policies of the Biden administration that were designed to reduce drilling and mining while increasing conservation. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, accused the Biden administration and former Secretary Deb Haaland of “throttling” fossil fuels. “Governor Doug Burgum understands what Secretary Haaland apparently forgot, that abundant affordable energy is a fundamental pillar of our national security,” he said. Several Democrats said Mr. Burgum’s vision for unleashed fossil fuels threatens the nation. “The Trump administration’s climate and energy policies are not a mystery; it is to exacerbate the climate crisis,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who spoke against Mr. Burgum yet voted for him. Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, was unsparing in his words for Democrats. “It’s alarming that so many Senate Democrats were duped into voting for an oligarch who is now charged with stewarding the nation’s public lands and wildlife,” he said. “If Democrats want to know why so many people are disillusioned, they need to look no further than this vote.” A multimillionaire former Microsoft executive who served two terms as governor of North Dakota, Mr. Burgum ran briefly for the White House before dropping out of the race to endorse Mr. Trump and become his adviser on energy issues. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT During his confirmation hearing Mr. Burgum said he viewed America’s public lands and waters as part of the country’s financial “balance sheet,” with potentially trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas and minerals waiting to be extracted beneath the surface. “We have all this debt,” Mr. Burgum said. But “we never talk about the assets,” he said. “It’s our responsibility to get a return for the American people.” “Not every acre of federal land is a national park or a wilderness area,” Mr. Burgum said, adding, “Some of those areas we have to absolutely protect for their precious stuff, but the rest of it, this is America’s balance sheet.” Mr. Burgum declared that any curbs on energy production posed a national security threat and endorsed Mr. Trump’s vision of “energy dominance,” a phrase that is shorthand for more fossil fuel production. He also insisted that the United States was in the midst of an energy crisis, even as it is producing more oil than any nation at any time in history and is the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Burgum said he would pursue an “all of the above” strategy but also said he would cut incentives for what he called “intermittent” power projects, referring to renewable energy like wind and solar power. He said there has been too much so-called “intermittent” power built in recent years and not enough baseload, referring to gas or coal that can be stored and burned to produce electricity. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels produced on federal lands and waters account for nearly 22 percent of U.S. greenhouse gases.

For years, the fossil fuel industry and its allies have tried to overturn one of the most important federal rulings in the history of climate policy: the one that requires the government to limit greenhouse gases. They lobbied. They sued. And so far they’ve failed. But in President Trump, they have a new ally in their campaign against the rule, known as the endangerment finding. The finding empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, because they endanger human life. On his first day in the White House, Mr. Trump ordered the E.P.A. administrator and other agency leaders to make a recommendation within 30 days on the “legality and continued applicability” of the endangerment finding, setting up an early clash over the science of climate change. Since the E.P.A. has an obligation to regulate pollutants that harm human health, eliminating the endangerment finding would debilitate the agency’s authority to curb emissions from automobile exhaust, power plants, oil and gas wells, factories and more. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “This is going to happen,” said Steven J. Milloy, a former Trump transition adviser, referring to the overturning of the endangerment finding. Mr. Milloy, who denies the established science of climate change and has been encouraging the new administration to reverse the finding, said that without it, “all the federal government climate stuff kind of melts away.” Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s pick for E.P.A. administrator, did not address the matter head-on during his confirmation hearing. In written answers to the committee, reviewed by The New York Times, he pledged to “learn from E.P.A. career staff about the current state of the science on greenhouse gas emissions and follow all legal requirements,” and said, “I acknowledge that there are many who endorse the endangerment finding and others who have concerns about it.” Legal experts said the administration’s chances of successfully overturning the finding were slim. It was challenged in more than 100 lawsuits and was previously upheld by a federal appellate court. And as recently as 2023, the Supreme Court, with its majority of six conservative jurists (three appointed by Mr. Trump), declined to review the case. “It’s a finding about greenhouse gasses based on science. It will be hard to convince a court — even a court with Republican-appointed judges — that the science somehow isn’t there to support this finding,” said Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School. And in a notable shift, many of the staunchest corporate critics of the E.P.A.’s finding, as well as others who challenged it in court more than a decade ago, have abandoned the effort. Over the past decades of record-breaking heat and weather disasters, businesses have become more aware of the risks to their bottom lines posed by global warming. Europe and other foreign markets also have moved to aggressively regulate carbon emissions, which means that American companies must plan for regulations even if they don’t apply in their home market. Public opinion has also shifted significantly. Evidence of climate dangers, already clear in 2009, is overwhelming in 2025 amid supercharged wildfires, droughts, floods and deadly heat waves. When the endangerment finding was issued, just 35 percent of Americans saw climate change as a serious problem, compared with more than 60 percent today. “We are not calling for reversing the endangerment finding, which has been settled law for over a decade, as we believe that we can both unleash America’s energy potential and continue to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Marty Durbin, president of the Global Energy Institute at the United States Chamber of Commerce. That said, industry groups are eager to restrict the government from imposing regulations on their companies, and many support Mr. Trump’s agenda of weakening air and water protections. Few groups, however, are interested in a battle that would require them to publicly endorse Mr. Trump’s false claim that climate change is a hoax. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I don’t think that’s an easy message for industry to embrace,” said Kyle Danish, a partner at Van Ness Feldman, a Washington law firm that advises energy clients. “They’re beyond the point where they can say greenhouse gases don’t endanger public health and welfare,” he said. The endangerment finding was born out of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. E.P.A. that stated that the Clean Air Act obligated the agency to address pollutants that harm public health indirectly by warming the planet. The ruling forced the agency to weigh in on whether six greenhouse gases harmed public health, which the agency did, in the affirmative, in 2009. That assessment set off a legal mandate to regulate those emissions. To do so, the agency developed more than 200 pages of findings that outlined the science and detailed how increasingly severe heat waves, storms, floods and droughts were expected to contribute to higher rates of death and disease. While President Trump’s election appears to have offered opponents of the endangerment finding their best new shot at ending the rule, any attempt to do so would be not only a gamble, but also perhaps an inefficient way to reduce government regulation. The Edison Electric Institute, which represents some of the biggest electric utilities in the country, told the Supreme Court in 2023 that if the endangerment finding were overturned, power plants across the country could be exposed to lawsuits and a patchwork of decisions. “This would be chaos,” the group said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Several attorneys who represent electric utilities and other energy companies said their clients had not expressed a desire to overturn the endangerment finding. “They want sensible regulatory reforms,” said Jeffrey R. Holmstead, an energy attorney with Bracewell, a Washington law firm. Ms. Freeman noted that the first Trump administration did not seek to overturn the finding, despite calls for it to do so. Instead, it weakened existing rules and made enforcement a low priority, which led to legal challenges that were handled case by case. An overturning of the endangerment finding would allow the administration to stifle all greenhouse gas regulation in one fell swoop. “That’s the big payoff for them, and why they might, for ideological reasons, for performative reasons, or because they calibrated the legal risk, say, ‘Let’s, let’s try it.’ You never know, with this Supreme Court, right?” Ms. Freeman said. One possible avenue for the E.P.A. today would be to reprise arguments that failed to sway the court in 2007. None of the justices who voted in the 5-4 majority in the case are still on the court. The Trump administration could be betting that the court is more likely to favor their arguments this time around. Nathan Richardson, a law professor at Jacksonville University, said that Massachusetts v. E.P.A. was a landmark decision that today’s court would most likely view very differently. But the goal of weakening regulations could still be achieved by the much easier strategies of inaction or lax enforcement. The administration may also believe there is a political benefit to arguing against the existence of climate change in court. “Climate change, to many in the Trump administration, seems to be more of a culture-war issue than a science one,” Mr. Richardson said. The administration could also seek to weaken E.P.A. regulations in other ways, rather than in a central assault on the endangerment finding, he said. “There’s plenty of vehicles to do that — this would just be a particularly high-profile and brazen one,” he said. “Normally that’s not a good litigation strategy. But maybe strategy is different when you feel like the court is really, really on your side.”

After declaring a national energy emergency on his first day in office, President Trump said Thursday that coal could be a fuel source for new electric generating plants. He announced a plan to issue emergency declarations to build power plants to meet a projected increase in electricity demand for artificial intelligence. “They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” Mr. Trump said in a virtual appearance at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He added that if gas and oil pipelines get “blown up,” coal could be used as a backup energy source. “We have more coal than anybody,” Mr. Trump said. “We have more oil and gas than anybody.” While the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and while it has more coal reserves than any other country, it’s only the fourth-largest producer of coal, behind China, India and Indonesia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But reliance on fossil fuels like coal made the United States one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane, which have irreversibly heated the planet and driven global climate change. Despite Mr. Trump’s talk about building coal plants, the United States has drastically reduced its coal generating capacity in recent years. Most of the decline came because natural gas, and now renewables like solar and wind, were cheaper sources of energy. A 2023 study showed that 99 percent of U.S. coal plants were more expensive to run than renewable replacements. By 2023, the 206 coal plants remaining in the United States supplied roughly 16 percent of the nation’s electricity, far below natural gas and less than both renewables and nuclear power. Almost a quarter of current coal generation is slated for retirement by 2040, according to data compiled by the Energy Information Administration in October 2024. Those reductions cross 51 coal plants. The pace of those retirements slowed last year while energy demand increased. Utilities predict a 20 percent increase in demand for electricity by 2035, according to data compiled by RMI, a nonprofit group focused on energy research. Experts said that the rise in electricity use was expected under a clean energy transition and that coal generation wouldn’t be required to meet it. “Utilities are skipping a step and asking everyone to take it as a foregone conclusion that if there’s demand growth from manufacturing, onshoring, and data centers or A.I., then it has to be met with coal, when in fact it’s one of the most expensive resources left for them to operate,” said David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group. But industry groups said that under Mr. Trump, it might be possible to increase coal exports and build smaller coal plants. “There’s a sense of optimism with the new administration,” said Emily Arthun, chief executive of the American Coal Council. While the coal industry could experience a small bump under Mr. Trump, experts said coal was simply too expensive to make a comeback. “Coal is fundamentally uneconomic,” said Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, an energy think tank. “Any need that isn’t met by wind or solar or battery storage will for the most part be met with natural gas, and coal will still be a distant fourth resource in that mix.” The Trump administration’s unwavering commitment to fossil fuels could hinder the country’s competitiveness in the energy transition. China dominates the United States in virtually every aspect of clean energy, and fossil fuel generation has reached a historic low in the European Union. Last year, solar overtook coal for the first time, and wind overtook both coal and gas, according to a new report by Ember, an energy think tank.