Living on Earth

Seas Rising Faster With Antarctic Melt / Boston's Rising Tide / Humpback Whales Rebound / Beyond The Headlines / The Last Lobster In this episode, we delve into Antarctica's rapid ice loss, which is three times what it was just a decade ago thanks to warmer ocean temperatures that eat away at the icy continent from below.

These same warmer waters are also increasing access to food for humpback whales, and their population is booming thanks in part to conservation efforts. But the humpback whale comeback could be short-lived.

And up on the coast of Maine the warming ocean is a threat for lobstermen who have enjoyed unprecedented catches in recent years. Those stories and more, in this installment of Living on Earth from PRI.

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Tough Climate At The G7 / Canada Buys Tar Sands Oil Pipeline / EPA Dilutes Toxics Law / Beyond the Headlines / BirdNote: Exquisite Thrush Song / Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America / Audio Postcard: A Fisherman Rigging Bait on Nantucket In this episode, we discuss President Trump's refusal to join America's closest allies in discussions to advance the Paris Climate Agreement at the G7 Summit.

The Trump Administration is also narrowing regulation of toxic chemicals, even though EPA is tasked with doing so by federal law.

And we talk with a writer who followed in the footsteps, and paddle strokes, of the people who journeyed to North America thousands of years ago. Their remarkable ability to adapt could hold lessons for our world today, as we face a rapidly changing climate.

Those stories and more, in this installment of Living on Earth from PRI.

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Zero Carbon Nuclear Boost For New Jersey / Beyond the Headlines / BirdNote®: Roseate Spoonbill: Hot Pink / Toxic Black Hair Products / Former EPA Chief Gina McCarthy Launches Center for Climate, Health and the Environment At Harvard In this episode, we connect some dots between environmental factors and public health. Black women may be far more exposed than white women to chemicals that disrupt the body's hormone system, research shows. These chemicals can be found in 50% of hair care products marketed to black women, and just 7% of those marketed to white women -- and that may help explain why black women have a higher incidence of early menarche, preterm birth, diabetes, and other hormone-mediated illnesses. 

 

Research is also emerging about how climate change can affect public health, with heat waves, wildfires, storms and pathogens, and communicating these complex links to the public can pose a challenge. But former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy was never one to back down: and she's taking on the twin foes of climate change and public health, with a new initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health called "C-CHANGE" (the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment).

 

And since the world needs more carbon-free energy in order to prevent those public health consequences, nuclear energy is getting a PR boost. Some like that it does not emit greenhouse gases like the other baseload power sources of coal, oil and natural gas. Others worry about accidents and the lack of no long-term storage plan for radioactive spent fuel from conventional reactors. The State of New Jersey says the benefits outweigh the concerns and has decided to subsidize two aging nuclear plants that were scheduled to close.

 

Those stories and more, in this installment of Living on Earth from PRI.

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Half a Degree Hotter Will Cost $30 Trillion / Beyond The Headlines / A Record Hurricane Disaster in Puerto Rico / Final Generation for the Marshall Islands? / Nooks for Nesting Islands that were once paradise are turning into places of peril, threatened by rising seas and intense hurricanes. This week we discuss Puerto Rico's high mortality in the wake of Hurricane Maria; a new study estimates thousands died as a result of the island's devastated infrastructure, which delayed medical services and cut off access to clean water and electricity.

Meanwhile, on the other side of our blue planet, kids as young as age nine share what it's like to see their beloved Marshall Islands, low-lying and far-flung across the Pacific, inundated by rising seas. They fear they may be "The Last Generation" to live there.

There's no way to put a price on the loss of lives, or of a homeland. But it is possible to estimate the economic costs of climate change, and a Stanford study finds a whopping $30 Trillion gap in GDP between a 1.5 degrees Celsius versus 2 degrees C rise in global mean temperature. Those stories and more, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRI.

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Alaska Acts on Climate / The Most Toxic Town in America / Beyond the Headlines / No Refuge in Wildlife Refuges / Copperheads at Shawangunk / Free the Beaches: Desegregating America's Shoreline

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FDA Scientist Finds Weed Killer on Many Foods / Beyond the Headlines / Cool Fix for a Hot Planet: Storing CO2 in Rocks / UN Climate Talks Gear Up for December / BirdNote®: Dippers on the Elwha / Nepal's Threatened Wetlands / Saving Kerala's Fresh Water

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The Koch Brothers & Trump / Beyond the Headlines / Alaska Youth Sue to Fight Climate Change / Pesticide Peril in Paradise

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Late Spring Imperils Birds / Beyond the Headlines / Champions for Children and Corals / BirdNote®: Whooping Cranes / Kerala's Ambitious Organic Pledge

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Pruitt Under Fire On Capitol Hill / Beyond the Headlines / Science Note: Sea Urchins Eat Rocks / Wasting a Wetland With Trash Ash / American Bittern: Master of Camouflage / Goldman Prize Winners Block Secret Nuclear Plant Deal

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The Amazon as Legal Person / Ancient Wisdom for Earth Day / Beyond The Headlines / The Green Berkeley Hills - The Place Where You Live / Valve-Turning Protestors / A Pipeline Eco Engineer Protests

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