After four decades of working for the Natural Resources Defense Council, its president Frances Beinecke is stepping down. Host Steve Curwood discusses her life, and her new book, The World We Create, with its message of hope for the future of the environmental movement and the Earth.

In this week’s trip beyond the headlines, host Steve Curwood and Peter Dykstra discuss the largely unproven connection between powerlines and cancer, why thalidomide wasn’t used in the U.S., and Prohibition’s long-term effect on ethanol as a fuel.

In 2010, in one of the deadliest mine accidents in US history, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Coal mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners. Now Don Blankenship, the CEO of mining company Massey Energy, is facing federal criminal charges related to the disaster. Law professor Patrick McGinley talks to host Steve Curwood about the case.

For years, national leaders have failed to create sustainable climate change solutions, and poorer nations and communities have borne the brunt of inaction. In conversation with host Steve Curwood, the Daily Climate’s Science Writer Marianne Lavelle discusses how human rights issues are now getting interwoven with climate change solutions and that future agreements must account for this.

Living on Earth is giving a voice to Orion Magazine’s long-time feature, The Place Where You Live, where people write essays about their favorite places. This week, we hear from Karin Vermilye in Gaborone, Botswana, a city where water scarcity is an ever present concern.

Poaching African rhinoceros for their horns has pushed to them to brink of extinction. Today, there are only 25,000 rhinos left in the world, 85-percent of them in South Africa. Now a national park there is selling off some of its rhinos to relocate and protect them. Bobby Bascomb reports from Pilanesberg National Park.

President Obama is using EPA authority under the Clean Air Act to try to curb dirty power plant missions including CO2 and mercury, but coal interests are fighting back in the courts. Vermont Law Professor Pat Parenteau tells host Steve Curwood that the latest of Obama’s regulations to wind up before the Supreme Court is the Mercury Rule.