Obama: US President Barack Obama primes the renewable energy economy by leading by example. White House Environmental Executive Jon Powers tells host Steve Curwood about the President’s call for all federal agencies to get 20%of their energy from renewable sources by 2020.

In this week’s trip beyond the headlines, Peter Dykstra tells host Steve Curwood stories of some conservatives newly turned conservationists, and we remember a famous tree-sit on its anniversary.

Love Canal was a toxic dump for chemical waste used by the Hooker Chemical Company in the 1950s in Niagara Falls, New York. In the next 20 years two schools and 900 homes were built on or near Love Canal. A young housewife, Lois Gibbs, lived there, and tells host Steve Curwood that more than half the children had birth defects. She organized the community and led a precedent-setting fight against the federal government to get all the families relocated.

In Washington state, a proposed new coal export terminal would be sited in the middle of the rich fishing grounds of a Native American tribe. But as Ashley Ahearn reports, treaty rights may give the tribe veto power over the development.

A key federal tax credit for wind power may well expire at the end of December, throwing doubt on the future of the planned offshore Cape Wind project. Reporter Beth Daley talks with host Steve Curwood about the future of offshore wind in Massachusetts and United States.

For the third year running, Massachusetts has won top efficiency honors from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. In the next story in our series PowerShift, the state's Energy Commissioner Mark Sylvia tells host Steve Curwood what the Bay State is getting right.

In the Pacific Northwest, the salmon is a source of food and livelihood for people, animals and the forest. Writer Mark Seth Lender notes that this nutritious bounty for the ecosystem comes at the ultimate cost to the salmon.

Host Steve Curwood speaks with Julia Butterfly Hill, who perched in a giant redwood in Northern California for more than two years to save it from being cut down.