The tiny creatures called springtails used to be described as insects, but were reclassified as a different order altogether called collembola a dozen years ago. There are 8000 species of springtails, and they're ubiquitous in caves, mountaintops, the tropics and the arctic. But Ari Daniel Shapiro reports that some species of collembola are facing extinction due to climate change and habitat loss.

President Obama has laid out a comprehensive and ambitious plan to reduce US carbon dioxide emissions from sources like power plants and expand the use of renewables and natural gas. Host Steve Curwood gets reactions from David Hawkins Director of Climate Programs at NRDC, Sierra Club’s executive director Michael Brune, and a student activist.

Technologies for creatively displaying energy and water use have grown quickly over the past decade, but most focus on resource use at the individual or building level. A new website applies this approach to the entire town of out of Oberlin, Ohio. The Oberlin Environmental Dashboard hopes to become a model for community-level resource conservation. Host Steve Curwood speaks with John Petersen, Professor of Environmental Studies at Oberlin and creator of the Oberlin Environmental Dashboard.

Seventeen-year cicadas are coming to the end of their season, and a team at North Carolina State University wants citizens to send them cicada corpses. Measuring the dead insects can help show how urbanization is impacting the species. Erin Weeks reports on the citizen science project.

The world’s largest solar powered boat made history by circumnavigating the globe. Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb reports that the ship’s now busy in the Atlantic serving as an emissions free platform for scientists to collect data about the Gulf Stream.

Some species of animals, especially unloved invasive species like pigeons and carp are so reviled they're regarded as trash. Dave Johnson, co-editor of a new book of essays called Trash Animals, an essay anthology, joins host Steve Curwood to discuss how humans treat their co-inhabitors.