Peter Dykstra and host Helen Palmer examine proposed legislation in Wyoming that would ensure renewable energy cannot be used in the state for power generation, and the reluctance of the EPA to pay compensation for a disastrous mine waste spill. Also in environmental history, they note a trio of aviation firsts that include one mishap that might have left a hydrogen bomb underneath Greenland’s melting ice.

For anole lizards living in Puerto Rican cities, the slickness of walls and windows poses a challenge to creatures that evolved on rocks and trees. Yet they are fast adapting to grip well on smooth surfaces. Living on Earth’s Helen Palmer visited anole researcher Kristin Winchell in her lab at the University of Massachusetts Boston to see how these little reptiles are coping with the built environment.

Fig trees are one of the world’s most diverse groups of plants, and have fed people and thousands of other species for millennia. Mike Shanahan, author of Gods, Wasps, and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees, tells Living on Earth’s Helen Palmer about the unique ecology, mythology and cultural value of fig trees, and how they can help us care for and protect nature.

The vaquita, the world’s smallest whale, lives only in Mexico’s Gulf of California and is critically endangered, due to illegal fishing. Now the Center for Biological Diversity plans legal action against the U.S. government for its failure to sanction Mexico for not stopping the poaching. Living on Earth’s Steve Curwood spoke with CBD’s Sarah Uhlemann about the threats vaquita face, and the legislative efforts to save them.

A state-of-the-art report that brings together some of the best minds in environmental policy and economics recommends a new way of evaluating the social costs of carbon pollution to keep up with the best available science. Living On Earth’s Helen Palmer and Professor Billy Pizer, an economist at the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy discussed the changes and why social cost evaluations are crucial to tackling carbon pollution.