Living on Earth

Prairie Senate Races Show Climate Divide / Beyond the Headlines / Note on Emerging Science: Puffins Use Tools / China Leads on Climate / California's Electric Vehicle Future / EPA Devalues Science To Downplay Chemical Risk / BirdNote®: October Migrants / Urban Farming During COVID Studies show that children exposed in utero to the pesticide chlorpyrifos suffer brain damage. But in a new risk asses...

Judge Barrett and Environmental Law / Vice Presidential Debate on Climate / The Environment in Western Senate Races / Climate Change Disrupts Major Transportation Corridor / Beyond the Headlines / Enduring Against Seemingly Impossible Odds Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is a textualist who tends to interpret the law narrowly, meaning that if she is confirmed, she would generally rule agai...

Maine Senate Race and the Environment / BirdNote®: Swallows on Wires / Climate on Chaotic Debate Stage / John Kerry Cochairs Biden Climate Plan / Black Lung and COVID-19 / Scylla and Charybdis on the Zambezi River / Beavers Return to England One of the key races in the 2020 elections is for the US Senate in Maine, where the environment is consistently rated as a priority issue for voters. Incumben...

Key Southern US Senate Races and the Climate / Beyond the Headlines / A Win for Native American Sovereignty / BirdNote®: Eastern Whip-Poor-Will - Bird of the Night Side of the Woods / Megafire Hard Times / Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Environment Climate and the environment are controversial subjects in several closely-watched US Senate races in the South this fall. The South faces significant clim...

Black & Latinx Voters Lean Green / Beyond the Headlines / World's Largest Wetlands on Fire / BirdNote®: Thick-Billed Euphonia: Deceitful Mimic / Spirit Run: A 6,000-Mile Marathon Through North America's Stolen Land As wildfires blaze across the West Coast of the U.S., Brazil grapples with its own fires in its massive Pantanal wetlands, the largest in the world, and in the Amazon rainforest. Also,...

Mastering Fire with Fire / Women Hotshot Firefighters / Wetlands Mitigate Hurricane Damage / Millions of Americans Lack Clean, Affordable Water / Beyond the Headlines / BirdNote®: New Zealand's Kakapo / Cutting Carbon for Healthier Kids Fires are inevitable in much of the West due to the region's ecology, but devasting megafires aren't. How fire itself can be used as a tool to manage wildfires and...

More Organics, Less Cancer / FaceTime: Bumblebees / Toxic Black Hair Products / Getting Hormones Out of Wastewater / HBO's "Ice On Fire" Offers Climate Solutions A major study finds a significant reduction in the risk of breast cancer and lymphoma among high consumers of organic food. Also, Black women in America commonly use hair relaxers and leave-in conditioners to straighten and smooth their t...

Republican National Convention / Container Farming in the City / Saving West Africa's Last Rainforest Climate change was barely mentioned at the 2020 Republican National Convention but President Trump did brag of rolling back environmental regulations. Also, when an oil palm development in the poor West African country of Liberia uprooted indigenous communities, destroying their religious shrines...

Democratic National Convention / "Hadestown" Brings Climate Change To Broadway / Underland: A Deep Time Journey / Water Ranching in Mexico The 2020 Democratic National Convention featured voices from all across the country, some of whom highlighted climate change as a key concern for this election. But climate change appeared to take a backseat to other issues facing the nation. Also, for a couple...

Kamala Harris and Environmental Justice / Healthy People Equal Healthy Forests / Forests of Rain / Note on Emerging Science: Plastic-Eating Mushrooms / Cloning Giant Sequoias / 'Forest Bathing' for Health Former Vice President Joe Biden's choice of Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate made history and highlighted the campaign's focus on environmental justice. Also, for many of those living in...

Bi-Partisan Victory for Great American Outdoors Act / Funding the National Parks, Finally / Beyond the Headlines / Fishing Fleet Threatens the Galapagos / BirdNote®: What Do Desert Birds Drink? / Healthy Buildings Boost Productivity / Trying to Train Crows For years national parks and public lands in the United States have been severely underfunded. The Great American Outdoors Act is set to help t...

Saving Forests Could Save Us from Diseases / Beyond the Headlines / Race and the Nature Gap / Parktracks: Sounds of the Kiowa Nation Buffalo Songs / Systemic Racism and Green Groups The environmental movement in America has deep ties to the nation's history of systemic racism and white supremacy. Now, as Americans confront racial injustice, powerful green groups like the Sierra Club are beginning...

Trump Rolls Back National Enviro Policy Act / Beyond the Headlines / "Goatscaping" for Chemical-Free Weed Control / Farmland Losing to Development / Crab-Eater Seals Take a Break / Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Blue Jay The Trump Administration has rolled back rules for a 50-year-old bedrock environmental law that requires careful study of possible impacts from major infrastructure...

Climate Disinformation on Facebook / Beyond the Headlines / Tracking Migratory Species from Space / Clean Energy in Space to Save Planet Earth / The Sirens of Mars The Mars Perseverance Rover is set to leave Earth in late July or early August with the mission of helping to find out if there is evidence of past or present life on Mars. We'll talk with an astrobiologist who is part of the mission te...

Democratic Climate Action Plan / Beyond the Headlines / Guinea Fowl and Tick Control / BirdNote®: The Paradise-Whydah / Jane Goodall On 60+ Years of Conservation And Research The iconic Jane Goodall has spent her life advocating for the conservation of the natural world. Sixty years ago on July 14th, 1960, Jane arrived in what is now Gombe National Park, Tanzania, to begin her groundbreaking resea...

Siberian Heat Wave / Beyond the Headlines / EPA Approves GMO Mosquito Trials / Court Finds EPA Violated Pesticide Safety Procedures / Dancing with Bees: A Journey Back to Nature The town of Verkhoyansk, Siberia recently hit a record-high temperature of 100.4º F, though it is well north of the Arctic Circle. Why the Far North is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the implications...

A Texas Town Refuses Fracking Expansion / Beyond the Headlines / Bill McKibben on the Divestment Movement / Eye Contact with a Wild Elephant / BirdNote®: Salmonberry Bird The fossil fuel divestment movement is making inroads at major institutions, including Ivy League schools, massive pension funds and more. Author and climate activist Bill McKibben reflects on what the divestment movement has ach...

Juneteenth and African Foodways / The Racial Gap of Pollution Responsibility / Redlined Real Estate & Extreme Urban Heat / Why I Wear Jordans in the Great Outdoors / Farming While Black: A Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land June 19th marks the holiday known as Juneteenth, when African Americans gather to celebrate emancipation of ancestors from slavery with picnics and cook outs. The voyage...

Race and Environmental Justice / Beyond the Headlines / COVID-19 and Healthy Buildings / Red-Billed Oxpeckers and Black Rhinos / Coronavirus Reduces Rhino Poaching / Climate Liability Cases Seek Big Damages from Big Oil / Lyme Disease Risk is High in City Parks, Too Environmental pollution and exposure to climate risks like heat waves are closely linked with systemic racism. Yet national environme...

#BlackBirdersWeek / Beyond the Headlines / Border Wall Threatens Sacred Native Lands / Reopening National Parks / Poetry of "The Park" A group of Black scientists, birders, and nature enthusiasts recently convened on social media to create the first ever Black Birders Week. It's giving a voice to birders of color everywhere, who face prejudicial suspicion and policing while pursuing their passion....

Hurricanes and COVID-19 / Beyond the Headlines / Outdoor Learning Safer in the Pandemic / The Pear Tree / Climate and Marine Disease / Why Fish Don't Exist The year 2020 could be the warmest ever and its Atlantic hurricane season is predicted to be busier than average. The US may face three or more extremely dangerous storms at a time when FEMA is already swamped with pandemic relief and working t...

Democrats Launch Climate Change Task Force / Beyond the Headlines / Backyard Tigers in America / The Farmer The Grain The Miller The Sea / Animal City: The Domestication of America Former Vice President Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee following Senator Bernie Sanders' April departure from the race. Despite stark ideological differences, the two have formed several unit...

Trump Stalls Clean Energy Loans / Beyond the Headlines / World's Largest Parrot: Note on Emerging Science / Food Waste Increase in the Pandemic / Tips for Low-Waste Living / The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis Paris Climate Agreement lead UN diplomat Christiana Figueres recently wrote the book "The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis" and speaks about how making the urgen...

Coronavirus Shocks US Food System / Beyond the Headlines / The Rule of Five: Making Climate History at the Supreme Court The coronavirus has disrupted the economy, with grocery shortages and news of massive food dumping some of the most visible effects. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and other books, on how the pandemic exposes the vulnerabilities in the American food supply. Als...

Farmworkers and the Virus / A Migrant Farmworker Shares COVID-19 Fears / Beyond the Headlines / Supreme Court Clean Water Win / Note on Emerging Science: The Days the Earth Stood Still / Zoos and Aquariums Online / Behind the Quarantine at the New England Aquarium / Sap-Iens: Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers Farmworkers are considered essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, and without them there...