Continuing their conversation from last week, Peter Dykstra and host Steve Curwood look back at the year’s most prominent environmental feats and shortfalls, which include the Obama administration’s encounter with fake news, new chapters in the environmental justice movement and an unlikely city to turn to renewable energy for lighting up its famous nightlife.

Birds can squawk, trill, or chirp, and a few whistle. As Michael Stein points out, those are often the easiest ones for humans to imitate.

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to bring back coal miners jobs and reopen the mines, attracting broad support in Pennsylvania’s coal country. Allegheny Front reporter Reid Frazier interviewed miners and state lawmakers about their hopes and expectations under the new Presidency.

The federal Export-Import Bank finances overseas projects to help sell American goods. The bank gave coal, gas and oil projects nearly $34 billion worth of loans and guarantees during President Obama’s tenure. Investigative reporter Susanne Rust tells Host Steve Curwood the projects will emit about as much greenhouse gases as would be saved through Obama’s embattled Clean Power Plan.

They called her “Granny”, the matriarch of an orca pod in Puget Sound. Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research, has studied Granny, officially named J2, for more than four decades. Granny might have been as old as 105 and she led her pod to find salmon, their major food source. She’s presumed dead as she has not been seen for over 3 months. Ken Balcomb tells host Steve Curwood, the J-pod, already impacted by rising toxicity in the ocean food chain and depleted salmon stocks, may now fragment.

New analysis of sea surface temperatures validates the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s updated global warming record released in 2015. This confirmation rebuts allegations from some Republicans on Capitol Hill that NOAA manipulated the 2015 NOAA data, which shows continuing global warming as opposed to earlier NOAA research that had suggested a two-decade long warming pause.