start near the Los Angeles International Airport and head due east on the Santa Monica Freeway, one of the busiest stretches of road on the globe, bumper to bumper with luxury V-6’s, exhaust-spewing pickups and hybrid sedans, all crawling through the Los Angeles megalopolis, sparkling under the famously omnipresent Southwest sun. Take the freeway through the suburbs, sprawling blocks of well-tended lawns and modern mansions, liberally sprinkled with chain restaurants and business parks. Then turn north on Interstate I-15, up and through the rugged San Gabriel Mountains, until it spits you out into the flat, dry land on the other side.Here, instead of Jamba Juice you get Joshua trees. The only living things you might bump into are bighorn sheep and cottontail rabbits, and, once the sun sets, every star in the sky pops with laser clarity. This is the Mojave Desert, part of the interconnected swatches of desert land in California that, combined, make up the largest wilderness area in the Lower 48. It’s also about to become host to the biggest renewable-energy projects in the world.