Amidst the environmental turmoil of the current administration, the Washington Post tells us we have three years left to act on climate before it is too late; in the meantime, the Supreme Judicial Court prepares to hear Exxon/Mobil’s appeal against Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and Massachusetts utilities try to move us backward while Vermont moves forward on renewables. Tune in for more.

This week we drown in the sorrowful organization that used to be the Environmental Protection Agency (and is now Every Polluters Ally).

Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Exxon/Mobil receive the brunt of our climate ire this week,  while Al Gore’s indefatigable optimism and his new movie An Inconvenient Sequel bring us hope.

Our focus today is the HONEST act (a.k.a the disHONEST act) and Scott Pruitt – the invisible leader of the EPA. Guest host Regina McIntyre guided us through the climate news this week. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced a bill called the Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment (HONEST) Act. This is a misleading piece of legislation that has made its way through the House of Representatives and is now being considered in the Senate.

This week we have three main topics: the CDP Worldwide (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) report that twenty-five fossil fuel companies are responsible for over half of the carbon pollution in the air since 1988; the actions that utilities are taking against renewable energy; and the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Henry David Thoreau.

This week we focus on a story in New York Magazine about the extremes of climate change and the media backlash to the article. Ironically, the story came out the same week as an ice sheet the size of Delaware calved off of Antarctica—a topic for another week!

The G20 meeting this past week held discussions of the Paris Accord. The rapid arrival of attractive electric vehicles shows that markets are committed to clean energy, even if our orange furor is not. Listen in.

The courts have forced the EPA to follow the law.  It said that a delay in enforcement of rules governing methane leaks was the same as a new rule. This means EPA must present real scientific data in order to change the Obama era rules. (Note to Scott- that may be harder than you think.) The court ruling has a lot of implications for other EPA plans.

The EPA also is considering holding public evaluations of climate science (“red team/blue team” in the current language.) Sunlight and public discussion is good, but the approach here seems to be to attempt to legitimize the tiny fraction of opinion that holds climate science as suspect. Beware the smoke and confusion!

This week we discuss phenology (whatever that is,) Massachusetts polls and cool things to do with MCAN this summer. Listen in.

This week, we interviewed Mariah Tinger, co-author of the book, Protecting the Planet: Environmental Champions from Conservation to Climate Change, winner of the Green Book Festival’s 2017 Best General Non-Fiction Book Award.

Climate change is often associated with predictions of dire calamities. But in the past, heroic individuals have stepped forward to meet even the most ominous ecological challenges. This book tells an inspirational story--a story both of pioneering environmentalists who raised our collective consciousness regarding nature's value and heroes of today who are working to secure a sustainable future.