In this week's trip beyond the headlines, Peter Dykstra tells host Steve Curwood about North Indian bandits extorting scarce water from villagers, a Canadian haven for honey bees and the anniversary of Los Angeles’ smog.

To cope with California’s drought, farmers are carefully selecting which crops they plant and overpumping from deep underground aquifers. But as the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick, tells host Steve Curwood, a viable long-term solution to the growing water crisis requires rethinking priorities and conserving much more water.

June 2014 was been the hottest on record, helping cause extreme drought and wildfires in the west. Living on Earth’s Emmett Fitzgerald reports on the drought, and the prospects for relief from the weather pattern known as el Nino.

In places in Pennsylvania, well water is unfit to drink, polluted with iron and manganese, but the source of the contamination is complex. Reid Frazier of the Allegheny Front reports that fracking, coal mining, and natural methane formations in the ground combine to muddle the picture.

Science historians Naomi Oreskes of Harvard and Erik Conway of CalTech's new science fiction book, The Collapse of Western Civilization lays out how devastating our lack of action on climate change could be. Oreskes join host Steve Curwood to discuss how democracy, the free market and science are all failing humanity and the planet.

A pipeline company proposes to extend a natural gas through New England to help solve the region’s energy price spikes. The Conservation Law Foundation’s Shanna Cleveland discusses with host Steve Curwood whether the pipeline is needed, and its unorthodox financing plan.