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Hurricane Forecasting in 2025
The 2025 hurricane season is underway, and the U.S. is likely to see higher than average activity. The past couple of years, extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped storms rapidly intensify to major hurricanes. We cover what’s in store this season and how cuts to federal weather monitoring and hurricane modeling could leave the U.S. underprepared for strengthening storms.
Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching
Record-breaking heat in the oceans has led to the most widespread coral bleaching event ever documented, ongoing since January 2023. As a result, many end up dying, but others can recover and even thrive amid hotter oceans. We’ll talk to a researcher finding ways to help corals survive and thrive as the oceans warm.
Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke
Poor air quality from wildfire smoke and other pollutants can harm cardiovascular health and also make farmworkers more prone to work injuries, according to researchers. But in California, requirements for employers to hand out face masks are often too late to prevent farmworkers from experiencing impacts. We talk about proposals to better protect farmworkers from air pollution.
CA Clean Air Tool Revoked
California’s car culture, trucking industry, and weather contribute to chronically bad air that it’s been gradually improving with its own laws and regulations and the blessing of the US Environmental Protection Agency. But now under President Trump, the EPA and Republican Congress are taking away California’s ability to clean up its air.
Cuts to Clean Energy Tax Credits
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that passed through the House of Representatives on party lines guts multiple provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, terminating or reducing tax credits for electric vehicles, clean hydrogen and advanced manufacturing. We discuss why over a dozen House Republicans who had voiced support for clean energy tax credits ultimately voted to cut them, and what could happen as the legislation moves to the Senate.
After the Storm
Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender is keenly aware of the risks of living right on the Connecticut coast as sea levels rise and hurricanes strengthen. But being that close to Nature, in all her ferociousness, sure does inspire.
Protecting Tenerife's Marine Marvels
One of the recipients of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize is helping to protect an especially biodiverse part of the oceans around the Canary Islands. Carlos Mallo Molina was previously a civil engineer who also loved scuba diving. When he found out about plans to build a massive port on the island of Tenerife that could have devastated the local marine life, he decided to leave construction and dedicate his career to protecting the oceans.
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Celebrating 30 years of Living on Earth!
Host Steve Curwood in the Living on Earth studio
Hurricane Forecasting in 2025
The 2025 hurricane season is underway, and the U.S. is likely to see higher than average activity. The past couple of years, extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped storms rapidly intensify to major hurricanes. We cover what’s in store this season and how cuts to federal weather monitoring and hurricane modeling could leave the U.S. underprepared for strengthening storms.
Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching
Record-breaking heat in the oceans has led to the most widespread coral bleaching event ever documented, ongoing since January 2023. As a result, many end up dying, but others can recover and even thrive amid hotter oceans. We’ll talk to a researcher finding ways to help corals survive and thrive as the oceans warm.
Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke
Poor air quality from wildfire smoke and other pollutants can harm cardiovascular health and also make farmworkers more prone to work injuries, according to researchers. But in California, requirements for employers to hand out face masks are often too late to prevent farmworkers from experiencing impacts. We talk about proposals to better protect farmworkers from air pollution.
This Week’s Show
June 6, 2025
listen / download
Hurricane Forecasting in 2025
listen / download
The 2025 hurricane season is underway, and the U.S. is likely to see higher than average activity. The past couple of years, extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped storms rapidly intensify to major hurricanes. We cover what’s in store this season and how cuts to federal weather monitoring and hurricane modeling could leave the U.S. underprepared for strengthening storms.
Saving Corals Amid Record Bleaching
listen / download
Record-breaking heat in the oceans has led to the most widespread coral bleaching event ever documented, ongoing since January 2023. As a result, many end up dying, but others can recover and even thrive amid hotter oceans. We’ll talk to a researcher finding ways to help corals survive and thrive as the oceans warm.
Protecting Farmworkers from Wildfire Smoke
listen / download
Poor air quality from wildfire smoke and other pollutants can harm cardiovascular health and also make farmworkers more prone to work injuries, according to researchers. But in California, requirements for employers to hand out face masks are often too late to prevent farmworkers from experiencing impacts. We talk about proposals to better protect farmworkers from air pollution.
Keeping the Vjosa River Wild
listen / download
The small Balkan nation of Albania already produces 99% of its electricity from hydropower and has plans to become a major exporter of hydro, threatening some of the last free-flowing rivers in Europe including the Vjosa. The 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize winners for Europe stopped a dam on the Vjosa River and convinced the government to designate Vjosa Wild River National Park.
Listening on Earth
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Living on Earth Producer Sophia Pandelidis is living and working remotely from Greece and sent in the sounds of church bells and festive bouzouki music in a café on the island of Paros, which is in the Aegean Sea between Santorini and Mykonos.
Special Features
Field Note: "After the Storm"
Living on Earth's Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender, ruminates on the storm as it meets the shore.
Blog Series: Mark Seth Lender Field Notes
Field Note: "Countermeasures"
Living on Earth's Explorer-in-Residence, Mark Seth Lender, shares observations about shorebirds in flight.
Blog Series: Mark Seth Lender Field Notes
...Ultimately, if we are going prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we are going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them...
-- President Barack Obama, November 6, 2015 on why he declined to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.
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