Sea Change

Until the Ukraine War, Russia was Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas. After the invasion, political leaders wanted off Russian gas, and fast. So, they turned to the U.S. In part two, we follow American gas all the way to Germany — Europe’s biggest energy consumer, where the energy crisis hit hardest. U.S. LNG provided a lifeline for Germany. But what happens when a country gets hooked?

In this episode, we explore a growing threat to our freshwater supplies in coastal regions all over the country. With climate change, we are experiencing sea-level rise and more frequent droughts, both of which make it easier for saltwater to creep into places we don’t want it.

As natural disasters worsen and extreme weather grows more frequent, it’s led to more people being displaced across the planet. On this episode of Sea Change, we explore what it means to recover after disaster.

A change in the White House could have changed everything for Black communities in Louisiana's polluted "Cancer Alley." Then, federal officials walked away.

It's summertime. Most of us hope to spend time on the beach, or by a river, or a pool, and we thought we'd try to understand why? Why do we want to be by water, and why does it make us feel so good? And it’s not just us. Understanding how the power of water makes us healthier and happier is actually a growing field of research.

Today, we talk with Jeff Goodell, Katharine Wilkinson, and Nathaniel Rich—three authors who write books that people want to read…maybe can’t put down…about the biggest existential threat of our time: climate change. We cover the importance of storytelling, what they've learned through the work and how the heck they even figure out what stories to write.

On April 20th, 2010, out in the Gulf of Mexico, the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded. The oil spill that followed is still considered the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States. Today, we are looking at the impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster 13 years later. We hear about the ongoing health effects on people who helped clean up the oil spill and ask, has the broken system that led to this avoidable disaster been fixed?

Everyone has a role in tackling the climate crisis, so what about artists? In our latest episode of Sea Change, we talk to three artists using everything from swamp muck to rock puppet shows to talk about our environment.

What does it mean to keep a history alive when the place itself is disappearing? As climate change causes worsening storms and sea level rise, it’s not just people’s homes and businesses that are at risk of vanishing, but also the places that hold our past.We travel across Louisiana's coast meeting people who are working to prevent histories from being forgotten from a local African American museum to the country’s first permanent Filipino settlement. And later, we talk with experts about how they’ve navigated historic preservation in an era of climate change.

Today we are bringing you an episode from a new podcast from our friends at Colorado Public Radio. The podcast is called Parched, and it’s about how the multi-decade drought in the West is impacting the Colorado River. It’s about people who rely on the river that shaped the West—and have ideas to save it.