In this week’s trip beyond the headlines Peter Dykstra and Steve Curwood discuss the lack of railroad bridge inspection in California and question whether we’re prepared to deal with a possible tar sands oil spill in the Great Lakes.

Grain Traders Cargill and Trans Coastal Supply are suing biotech giant Syngenta AG over tens of millions of dollars they lost from shipments containing the company's GMO corn China rejected. Temple University law professor Greg Mandel joins host Steve Curwood to analyze the lawsuits, China’s motivation, and what this might mean for GM corn.

International climate summits to date have brought disputes and stalling not agreement and action. Host Steve Curwood discusses tha latest UN meeting and his blueprint for ending inaction with Former Colorado Senator and climate negotiator, Timothy Wirth.

Levees along the Mississippi river and years of oil and gas extraction have caused dramatic erosion and subsidence in Louisiana. Bob Marshall, a reporter with the New Orleans news-site The Lens, discusses the new interactive project he developed with ProPublica with host Steve Curwood and explains how the vanishing land could displace thousands of people if nothing changes.

Much of the habitat on which Mallards and other ducks depend has been devloped or drained, leaving them short of food and safety from hunters. Writer Mark Seth Lender observes as they gather to await his arrival, and does what he can to provide for them.

The 2014 MIDORI Prize, a prestigious award for contributions to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity was won by, among others, Kamal Bawa, a professor at University of Massachusetts at Boston. Host Steve Curwood discusses the prize, Dr. Bawa's tropical rainforest research and the state of biodiversity in India, the U.S., and the globe.

Fracking wastewater is trucked into Ohio from Pennsylvania, processed and injected into deep wells. The Allegheny Front’s Julie Grant reports that many locals worry about earthquakes and water contamination, and argue that the state rules override citizen’s concerns about waste water well siting.

As part of oil and gas extraction, a large volume of toxic waste water is injected deep underground. This can cause earthquakes, and Oklahoma now experiences more quakes than anywhere in the continental U.S. Cornell University geophysicst Geoffrey Abers tells host Steve Curwood how the research linked waste water injection in Oklahoma to earthquakes 25 miles away.

New techniques allow companies to extract oil and gas from deep in the ground, but as Matt Richmond of WSKS and the Allegheny Front reports, naturally radioactive rocks above the Marcellus shale in the Eastern US can create a dangerous waste product.