Environment
The world's insect population is in decline — and that's bad news for humans
While it may sound nice to live in a world with fewer roaches, environmental writer Oliver Milman says that human beings would be in big trouble without insects. That's because insects play critical roles in pollinating plants we eat, breaking down waste in forest soil and forming the base of a food chain that other, larger animals — including humans — rely upon.
US Faces Crossroads On Renewable Energy Future — Go Big or Go Local
NY Times reporter Ivan Penn unpacks the debate over infrastructure: Do we fund huge wind and solar farms with new transmission lines, or go local, with rooftop solar panels, batteries and micro-grids?
Trees Talk To Each Other. 'Mother Tree' Ecologist Hears Lessons For People, Too
SUZANNE SIMARD says trees are "social creatures" that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans too. Simard grew up in Canadian forests as a descendant of loggers before becoming a forestry ecologist. She's now a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia. She explains her research on cooperation and symbiosis in the forest, and shares her personal story in the new memoir Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
Naturalist Traces The 'Astounding' Flyways Of Migratory Birds
Scott Weidensaul has spent decades studying bird migration. "There is a tremendous solace in watching these natural rhythms play out again and again," he says. His new book is A World On the Wing.
From Electrifying Rivers To Dimming The Sun, How Humans Try (And Fail) To Master Nature
New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert talks about the ways humans have harmed the natural world — and the unintended consequences of efforts to reverse the damage. Her new book is Under a White Sky.
Biden's Plan To Undo Trump's Last-Minute Deregulatory Spree & Enact A Climate Agenda
Trump called climate change a hoax. Biden calls it an existential threat. Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin talks about how Biden might reverse some of his predecessor's policies.
Remembering Nature Writer Barry Lopez
Lopez, who died Dec. 25, won the 1986 National Book Award for Arctic Dreams, an account of his travels in the far north over a period of four years. Originally broadcast in 1989 and 2013.
'Waste' Activist Digs Into The Sanitation Crisis Affecting The Rural Poor
An Alabama native, Flowers has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship for her work on behalf of rural Americans living without proper sewage treatment. She says the hookworm study was a "smoking gun," that highlighted the sanitation and environmental problems the rural poor face.
New Book Argues Migration Isn't A Crisis — It's The Solution
Climate change has put organisms on the move. In her new book, The Next Great Migration, Science writer Sonia Shah writes about migration — and the ways in which outmoded notions of "belonging" have been used throughout history to curb what she sees as a biological imperative.
Author Tours The 'End Of The World,' From Prairie Bunkers To Apocalypse Mansions
While researching his new book, Notes from an Apocalypse, about people who are preparing for doomsday, author Mark O'Connell undertook what he calls "a series of perverse pilgrimages."