For this week's trip beyond the headlines, Environmental Health News Editor Peter Dykstra and Host Steve Curwood look at the massive liabilities that Bayer is facing now that it owns Monsanto, maker of Roundup. Then, the two look at an unintended consequence of the coronavirus: a drop in carbon emissions. Finally, a look back through the history books to a moment that led to the famous Scopes Monkey Trial on evolution.

Amid the turmoil of the novel corona virus pandemic, oil prices recently had the largest one-day plunge since 1991, with major implications for the shale industry and workers, the climate and national security. Lorne Stockman, senior analyst at Oil Change International, joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss how a Green New Deal framework with clean energy could reduce the impact of the boom-bust oil price cycle.

A proposed oil drilling project in the Peruvian Amazon threatened to damage the ecosystem that isolated indigenous peoples there depend on. So an indigenous coalition went to court to try to block the project, and they recently won their lawsuit. Beatriz Huertas, an anthropologist for Rainforest Foundation Norway, spoke with Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb about the dangers faced by isolated indigenous communities in the Amazon and what this case means for indigenous communities in the future.

The forests of coastal Vietnam are among the most biodiverse on Earth, but in the face of rampant poaching, species are winking out. Recently conservationists got some good news as a species feared extinct, the Vietnamese fanged mouse-deer, was documented for the first time in more than 30 years. Andrew Tilker of Global Wildlife Conservation spoke with Living on Earth’s Aynsley O’Neill about how local knowledge helped locate the rare and tiny mouse-deer, also known as the Silver-backed Chevrotain.

Hundreds of thousands of small dams dot the rivers of the United States, and now that many are no longer economically useful, some are being removed in an effort to protect fish and riverine ecosystems. Julie Grant of the Allegheny Front reports on a dam removal project in the Ohio River watershed.

The Trump administration is rushing to wrap up its weakening of environmental rules, just in case the Republicans lose the White House, or Senate, or both. But rollbacks of Obama administration methane regulations and auto efficiency standards are proving difficult to justify on a scientific basis. Jody Freeman, a Professor at Harvard Law School, joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss the significance of the greenhouse gas regulations and how a new administration could usher in a new era of climate policy.