A recently returned Cali girl, I am becoming acquainted with the abundant natural trails and beaches in the Monterey Bay region. One such traipse, through the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, led me along the Old Growth Loop Trail where towering redwoods scrape the sky and soft ferns and leaves shush human sounds below. The park website extols it as “a forest in a perpetual state of becoming.”

Last year California auctioned off five wind farm lease areas in the northern and central parts of our coast, with winning bids totaling...