Even as the climate emergency grows it can be difficult to comprehend what a degree of temperature change or a foot of sea level rise really means on a personal scale. So journalist Devi Lockwood set out to find the stories of real people coping with climate disruption by traveling in twenty countries and asking people to “tell me a story about climate change.” She joined Host Steve Curwood to share a taste of these “1,001 Voices on Climate Change.”

Environmental Health News editor Peter Dykstra and Host Bobby Bascomb note three oil companies have abandoned their plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska despite rising oil prices. Also, Japan seeks to revolutionize renewable energy with a deep ocean current turbine prototype. And they commemorate the 50th anniversary of the EPA’s ban on the pesticide DDT, ten years after Rachel Carson’s exposé of the dangers of pesticides in her seminal book “Silent Spring.”

The US solar industry had been largely frozen since April with the threat of draconian tariffs, and thousands of workers have been laid off, stalling crucial progress towards climate goals. But then on June 6th, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily suspending tariffs on solar panels imported from Southeast Asia and invoked the Defense Production Act to stimulate more domestic production. Utility-scale solar installer SOLV Energy is among those solar companies now back in business, and its CEO George Hershman, speaks with Host Bobby Bascomb about this attempted derailment of clean energy progress needed to face the climate crisis.

Join Living on Earth and our partners for "Black Courage Upon the Sea: A Juneteenth Celebration of Robert Smalls" on Monday, June 20th

The 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize Recipient for Africa is Chima Williams, an environmental lawyer who worked with two communities to hold Royal Dutch Shell accountable for disastrous oil spills in Nigeria. Co-hosts Aynsley O’Neill and Bobby Bascomb talk about the devastation the spills caused and how Chima Williams and his colleagues brought the case to the Hague in the Netherlands to pursue justice.

Attorney Marjan Minnesma is the European winner of the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize, in recognition of the landmark suit she and her team won against the Dutch government over its inadequate steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions. She joins Host Steve Curwood to talk about other cases this precedent has inspired, and how climate activists in the United States can take similar legal action.

With the start of the Atlantic hurricane season June 1, Tropical Storm Alex has already flooded Cuba, the Bahamas, and South Florida. Wildfires are already ravaging parts of the western United States, deadly heat waves are predicted, and some scientists say summer in the United States is the 'danger season'. Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists tells Host Bobby Bascomb about the disturbing trend of increasingly dangerous climate-related extreme weather events.