Episodes

  • Trump Faces Youth Climate Lawsuit, Tempered Hope for COP30, EPA Employees Speak Out and more

    Trump Faces Youth Climate Lawsuit, Tempered Hope for COP30, EPA Employees Speak Out and more
    Jul 4 2025
    19-year-old Eva Lighthiser has experienced climate anxiety for most of her life, as her home state of Montana faces worsening floods, wildfires, and extreme heat. Now she and 20 other young people are suing the Trump administration over its efforts to boost fossil fuels while suppressing climate science and renewable energy. Also, ten years since nations adopted the historic Paris Agreement, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and hopes are dimming that we can meet the Paris goal of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As global leaders prepare to meet in Brazil for COP30, with recent preliminary sessions in Bonn, Germany, some say the entire UN climate agreement system is broken. And in a rare act of public criticism, hundreds of EPA employees published a declaration of dissent from the agency’s policies under the Trump administration, calling out its alleged ignoring of scientific consensus to benefit polluters, undermining of public trust and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • EPA Ignores Climate Dangers, From Plastic Trash to Art, and Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet.

    EPA Ignores Climate Dangers, From Plastic Trash to Art, and Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet.
    Jun 27 2025
    This June the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed eliminating regulations that limit climate changing gases from power plants, about a quarter of US emissions. Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus speaks about the perils of the broader Trump administration effort to weaken federal environmental protections. Also, the ugly truth of plastic is that the world produces over 400 million metric tons each year and recycles less than ten percent of it. But artist Erik Jon Olson is transforming unsightly plastic waste into beautiful, quilted works of art which are popping up in galleries and exhibitions across the United States. He shares the meaning and method behind his whimsical and striking artwork. And in his recent book Just Earth: How a Fairer World Will Save the Planet, Tony Juniper explores how tackling economic inequality within and between countries will go far to solve the climate and biodiversity crises. Tony Juniper has long advised King Charles III on the environment and climate and now chairs Natural England. He discusses the transformation that’s urgently needed to allow planet and people to thrive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Juneteenth and Striving for Ecological Justice

    Juneteenth and Striving for Ecological Justice
    Jun 20 2025
    Just as the enslavement of people was driven by commercial interests, today the enslavement of nature for profit violates a morality that sees value in all living things, according to the Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, pastor of New Roots AME Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts and former Chief of Environment, Energy and Open Spaces for the City of Boston. She joins us to reflect on how overcoming slavery, which is celebrated on Juneteenth, can inspire us to find ways to depend on each other so we can thrive in a world of ecological justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • US Disrupts African Food Tech; Pumping the Earth Dry; Saving a Sacred Mountain in Mongolia and more.

    US Disrupts African Food Tech; Pumping the Earth Dry; Saving a Sacred Mountain in Mongolia and more.
    Jun 13 2025
    One of the development initiatives affected by the Trump Administration’s shutdown of USAID is the Soybean Innovation Lab, which works to improve soybean yields and production in Africa to help boost farmers’ income. Our guest discusses her work with the Soybean Innovation Lab and why helping improve farmers’ yields is so fulfilling. Also, a recent study finds the Colorado River Basin has lost a tremendous amount of water in the last two decades, in part from thirsty farms pumping groundwater much faster than it can be replenished. We discuss the “Wild West” of unregulated groundwater, potential solutions and why the rapid depletion of ancient groundwater threatens the water supply for future generations. And the winner of the 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize for Asia was raised as a Mongolian herder and later became an engineer who worked on mining projects in the mineral-rich country. But when he learned that the Mongolian government was planning to mine the sacred Hutag mountain, he sprang into action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 mins
  • Hurricane Forecasting in 2025, Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching, Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke and more.

    Hurricane Forecasting in 2025, Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching, Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke and more.
    Jun 6 2025
    The 2025 hurricane season is underway, and the U.S. is likely to see higher than average activity. The past couple of years, extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped storms rapidly intensify to major hurricanes. But cuts to federal weather monitoring and hurricane modeling could leave the U.S. underprepared for strengthening storms. Also, record-breaking heat in the oceans has led to the most widespread coral bleaching event ever documented, ongoing since January 2023. Bleaching weakens the corals and many end up dying, but others can recover and researchers are finding ways to help corals survive and thrive. And poor air quality from wildfire smoke and other pollutants can harm cardiovascular health and also make farmworkers more prone to work injuries, according to researchers. But in California, requirements for employers to hand out face masks are often too late to prevent farmworkers from experiencing impacts. We talk about proposals to better protect the people who grow our food from air pollution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • CA Clean Air Tool Revoked, Cuts to Clean Energy Tax Credits, Turbulence and Climate Change and More.

    CA Clean Air Tool Revoked, Cuts to Clean Energy Tax Credits, Turbulence and Climate Change and More.
    May 30 2025
    California’s car culture, trucking industry, and weather contribute to chronically bad air that it’s been gradually improving with its own laws and regulations and the blessing of the EPA. But now under President Trump, the EPA and Republican Congress are taking away California’s ability to clean up its air. Also, the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that passed through the House of Representatives on party lines guts multiple provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, terminating or reducing tax credits for electric vehicles, clean hydrogen and advanced manufacturing. Plus, at a former gravel mine in northwestern Pennsylvania, nonprofits are working to plant 70,000 trees as part of a larger project to reforest thousands of acres of degraded mine land in the region. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Public Lands Reprieve, Trump Ignores Social Cost of Carbon, Seagrass “Gardening” and more.

    Public Lands Reprieve, Trump Ignores Social Cost of Carbon, Seagrass “Gardening” and more.
    May 23 2025
    Last-minute changes in the House budget reconciliation bill included scrapping one of the more controversial amendments that would have sold off public lands in the southwest to private developers. But the overall bill isn’t a complete win for the environment, with even deeper cuts to clean energy tax credits added at the last minute. Also, a new White House memo instructs federal agencies to disregard the economic impacts of climate change in their regulations and permitting decisions. This metric is known as the “social cost of carbon” and it has been used for decades to guide policy so that it considers the economic realities of our changing climate. Plus, seagrass is a foundation of marine ecosystems and stores as much as 35 times more carbon than a tropical rainforest, but warming ocean temperatures and other threats are wiping seagrass out. There is hope, though, as a project to “garden” or cultivate more resilient varieties is making waves along the U.S. East Coast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Pope Leo and Creation Care, Autism and Chemicals, Oystercatchers Bounce Back and more.

    Pope Leo and Creation Care, Autism and Chemicals, Oystercatchers Bounce Back and more.
    May 16 2025
    The new Pope, Leo XIV, has worked with interfaith environmental networks and there’s hope around the world that he may follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Pope Francis and bring issues of the environment and climate change to the forefront of his agenda. Also, autism spectrum disorder is now diagnosed in about 1 in 31 children in the United States, a rise of 70 percent in just four years according to the CDC. In addition to better awareness and changing diagnostic tools, growing scientific evidence also points to the role of exposure to toxic chemicals especially during early development in the rising prevalence of autism. And the American oystercatcher is a conservation success story thanks in part to efforts to educate the public and protect their ground nests from unaware beachgoers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins