Romance and Spring Harvest At Paradise Lot
For most gardeners, springtime means a few seedlings on a window sill. But for perennial gardeners, spring is a time of harvest. The new book, Paradise Lot, is a personal and heartwarming account of finding romance and growing a permaculture food forest of perennial plants on a degraded backyard plot in a gritty neighborhood of Holyoke, MA.
Deepwater Disaster Three Years On
Just three years ago, the Deep Water Horizon oil spill poured 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a team of chemists, engineers, and biologists is attempting to assess the damage to the Gulf ecosystem.
Baby Polar Bear Rescue
Climate Change is making life difficult for polar bears across the world. But an orphaned Alaska bear cub is about to get a new home, and a new sibling, at the Buffalo Zoo in upstate New York.
Unpredictable Weather and Climate Change
The United States has experienced a decade of wildly unpredictable weather; severe drought followed by a year of flooding; unprecedented wildfires and hurricanes. At the same time the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached a level not seen in three million years. Scientists are concerned that severe weather systems may be exacerbated as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Greenhouse Gambling
Cutting emissions might not keep the planet from heating up, but it would increase the odds of avoiding extreme temperature increases by the end of the century. MIT climate change researchers have worked those odds into a roulette wheel.
Science Note: Synthetic Ambergris
Ambergris is a strange substance regurgitated from the stomachs of Sperm whales. It is a key ingredient in some perfumes, and can sell for as much as $10,000 a pound. But natural ambergris may soon be replaced by a synthetic alternative, and that’s a good thing for the whales.
This Week’s Show
May 24, 2013
listen / download
Unpredictable Weather and Climate Change
listen / download
The United States has experienced a decade of wildly unpredictable weather; severe drought followed by a year of flooding; unprecedented wildfires and hurricanes. At the same time the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached a level not seen in three million years. Scientists are concerned that severe weather systems may be exacerbated as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Greenhouse Gambling
listen / download
Cutting emissions might not keep the planet from heating up, but it would increase the odds of avoiding extreme temperature increases by the end of the century. MIT climate change researchers have worked those odds into a roulette wheel.
Science Note: Synthetic Ambergris
listen / download
Ambergris is a strange substance regurgitated from the stomachs of Sperm whales. It is a key ingredient in some perfumes, and can sell for as much as $10,000 a pound. But natural ambergris may soon be replaced by a synthetic alternative, and that’s a good thing for the whales.
DOE Looks for Orphan Wells
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The federal government is pushing new efforts to deal with an old problem – abandoned oil and gas wells. In Pennsylvania, there may be as many as 100,000 orphan wells. If the wells were not sealed properly, they could explode.
The Darien Gap
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The Pan American highway doesn’t go all the way from South America to Canada without interruption. The road breaks in the dense forest between Panama and Columbia known as the Darien Gap. New Yorker correspondent Jennie Erin Smith visited this beautifully inaccessible region and brought back tales of tamarins and paramilitaries.
Mad about Magpies
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Producer Guy Hand tells the story of the much-maligned Magpie, the bird everyone loves to hate, and why the critter deserves a break.
Special Features
Christiana Figueres Optimistic For Ultimate Global Climate Deal
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Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Climate Secretariat stopped by the Living on Earth studios on her way from the University of Massachusetts Boston to the next phase of international climate negotiations that began in Bonn, Germany on April 29. The Bonn session is one of many leading up to a final meeting in Paris, France in 2015 when nations have pledged to come together on a binding deal to expand the Kyoto Protocol to include all major emitters of global warming gases. Figueres spoke with Living on Earth's Steve Curwood.
Blog Series: Living on Earth
The South Dakota Prairie
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Writer Linda Hasselstrom lives and writes on the South Dakota Prarie. It's a beautiful place that commands deep respect when the winter cold and snow arrive.
Blog Series: The Place Where You Live
Northern California
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In collaboration with Orion Magazine we take you to the rolling green hills of Northern California, as appreciated by Wong Yoo-Chong.
Blog Series: The Place Where You Live
Bodega Headland
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Thanks to determined citizen activists in the 1960s, the lovely cliffs of Bodega Headland in California on the San Andreas Fault did not become the site of a nuclear power station.
Blog Series: The Place Where You Live
"One of the things in childhood that seems to shape environmental behaviors in adulthood is parents taking their kids mushroom picking and berry picking: selecting a natural resource for consumption seems to be something that leads to environmental behavior in adulthood."
-- David Sobel Professor of Environmental Studies at Antioch University
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