For this week's trip beyond the headlines, Environmental Health News Editor Peter Dykstra joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about G20 nations providing more than $3 trillion in subsidies for fossil fuels despite their pledges to reduce emissions under the Paris Accord. Then, the two turn to the Great Salt Lake, which is becoming an environmental hazard as it continues to dry up. Finally, the two look at the 100th anniversary of the first crop dusting by airplanes and the birth of Delta Airlines.

With yet another deadly chemical plant accident in a low-income neighborhood to underscore the issues, this time in Houston on July 27, the Biden administration has now rolled out details of its environmental justice plan called Justice40. The program aims to share at least 40% of benefits from federal climate and infrastructure spending with disadvantaged communities. Heather McTeer Toney served as the EPA'S Southeast Regional Administrator under President Obama and is now an environmental justice liaison for the Environmental Defense Fund. She joins Host Steve Curwood to discuss the Justice40 Initiative.

Charlotte McConaghy is the author of last year’s best-selling novel Migrations. She joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about her newest book Once There Were Wolves, a mysterious tale of a woman-led team working to re-introduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, the people who confront them and the deadly toll of domestic abuse.

In the 2020 novel Migrations set in the future, polar bears are extinct. So are chimpanzees and wolves and big cats. For the novel’s protagonist, this mass extinction is personal. So, she does the first thing that comes to mind: she makes her way onto a fishing boat to follow what might be the very last migration of the Arctic Tern from pole to pole. Host Steve Curwood speaks with author Charlotte McConaghy about her masterful debut work of environmental fiction.

As a slew of extreme weather events hits the headlines, the evidence of climate disruption is undeniable. Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and author of The New Climate War warns we are headed for dangerous thresholds of climate disruptions beyond the reach of adaptation to cope. He joins host Steve Curwood to talk about the links between extreme weather and human-forced climate change, why sea level rise could be counted in the dozens of feet by 2100, and how an unchecked climate emergency imperils human civilization.

Despite rising global temperatures and an increase in climate change-related natural disasters, climate denial still runs rampant. As renowned climatologist Michael Mann describes in his latest book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, key major fossil fuel companies have spent decades deflecting blame and responsibility in order to delay action on climate change. As part of our LOE Book Club series, Professor Mann joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about the fight against climate denialism and inaction in all its forms.