This week in beyond the headlines, Peter Dykstra joins host Steve Curwood to discuss China’s step away from nuclear power. In Florida, another energy shift is underway as Florida’s biggest utility makes a switch from natural gas plants to solar power with batteries. Then, in the history vault, the two jump back to 1990 to biologist Sam LaBudde’s heroic undercover operation on a tuna boat that brought to light dolphin deaths caused by the tuna fishing industry.

Along the four major North American flyways, huge “rivers” of Arctic Terns and other migrating birds are now making their way north again. BirdNote®’s Mary McCann describes their incredible journey.

The unprotected parts of the Everglades region are open to development, including oil drilling. The Kanter Real Estate group recently won approval to drill an exploratory well in the Everglades ecosystem after a legal battle that started in 2015. Miami Herald Reporter Samantha Gross joins Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb to talk about the ruling.

Established as a national park in 1934 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979, Everglades National Park is much more than a mere swamp. Only an hour’s drive west from bustling Miami, the 1.5 million acres of the Everglades provides a place of sanctuary in nature for those looking for peace and quiet, as well as a front-row-seat view of wildlife from anhingas to alligators. Living on Earth’s Lizz Malloy went to check out the “River of Grass.”

Cyclone Idai on March 14 smashed into Beira, a coastal city of 500,000 in Mozambique. The storm, with its twenty-foot storm surge and winds of over 120 miles an hour, left catastrophic destruction in its wake in that locale and brought widespread flooding to the two million or more residents of Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. With cholera on the rise in the aftermath, the UN says this is one of the worst natural disasters to ever hit the Southern hemisphere. James Elder, the UNICEF Regional Chief of Communication for Eastern and Southern Africa, joins host Steve Curwood to recount his experiences in Beira after the cyclone and discuss the road to recovery.

Sehuencas water frogs, like other amphibians, have been devastated by the chytrid fungus, and a frog that scientists named “Romeo” was the last known of his kind and had stopped singing for a mate. But recently scientists discovered “Juliet” and four other Sehuencas water frogs hiding in the Bolivian cloud forest – and Romeo’s song is back. Sofia Barrón Lavayen, the manager of captive breeding at the K'ayra Center at the Museum of Natural History in Cochabamba, Bolivia, talks with Living on Earth’s Aynsley O’Neill about how the matchmaking is coming along.

House Democrats now in the majority have leverage through the federal budget for policies they are keen to advance, including climate action. Their 'Climate Action Now' bill HR 9 would bar President Trump from using federal funds to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as he has vowed to do. The bill also calls for President Trump to plan how the U.S. will keep its Paris commitments. Congresswoman Kathy Castor (D-FL), Chair of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, spoke with Host Steve Curwood about the prospects of the 'Climate Action Now' bill moving forward.

Four young people testified at the first hearing of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis on April 4, 2019. Chris Suggs, Lindsay Cooper, Aji Piper, and Melody Zhang spoke of their concerns about climate impacts on their generation, especially on low-income and minority groups. The committee members recognized their concerns, though some Republican members argued strong climate action could pose economic risks.