This week, Peter Dykstra and Steve Curwood dive beyond the headlines to note the fall of an iconic Monterey Cypress tree in San Diego, California, which was said to have inspired Dr. Seuss’s Truffula trees in “The Lorax”. Next they discuss the European far-right’s apparent shift away from climate denial, as climate-driven immigration hits home, and finally in the history calendar, it’s the 50th anniversary of the infamous Cuyahoga River fire, which helped prompt the passage of the Clean Water Act.

One of the most musical and complex bird songs in the US is that of the Brewer's Sparrow. It's a veritable aria, ringing out from the sagebrush of Eastern Washington's Columbia Basin. BirdNote®’s Mary McCann has more about this sageland singer.

Butternut trees, also known as white walnuts, used to be abundant in the forests of the Northeast and the Midwest, but have now been devastated by a fungus. As the Allegheny Front’s Andy Kubis tells us, help for this struggling species may soon be at hand. Ecologists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania found a small group of healthy butternuts and are studying how these hardy trees resisted the fungus.

The United Nations is preparing for the Climate Summit this September, where many countries are expected to boost their Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs, under the Paris Climate Agreement. Luis Alfonso de Alba is the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Climate Change, and he joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about concerns and hopes of keeping planetary warming from increasing more than 1.5 degrees centigrade.

2,000 delegates representing 185 countries gather in Bonn, Germany to refine rules and procedures for the Paris Climate Agreement, with an emphasis on boosting carbon reduction ambitions before the 2020 deadline. Living on Earth's Aynsley O'Neill has more.

Although climate wasn’t discussed much in the 2016 presidential election, this time around it’s turning out to be a much hotter topic. With over twenty Democratic candidates on the playing field, it can be hard to keep track of where they all stand on the climate crisis. So to sort it all out, Greenpeace put together a climate scorecard, grading each candidate on their commitment to a Green New Deal and to phasing out fossil fuels. There are a couple of standout candidates, but not a single presidential hopeful earned a Greenpeace A+. To hear about the scorecard, Host Steve Curwood speaks with Janet Redman, Climate Campaign Director for Greenpeace USA.

Esther Kiobel is one step closer to justice in her battle against The Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company. She has pursued the oil giant for nearly 25 years, since the Nigerian government executed her husband in 1995 on trumped up charges, allegedly encouraged by Shell. Ms. Kiobel’s husband was part of a group known as the Ogoni Nine, which fought against Shell for environmental and economic damages brought to their homeland near the Niger River Delta. Now Ms. Kiobel, supported by Amnesty International, will finally have her case for reparations and the clearing of her husband’s name heard by a District Court in the Netherlands. Host Steve Curwood speaks with Amnesty’s Head of Business and Human Rights, Mark Dummett.