Podcast #49: Peru's dolphin cull, making airlines pay for emissions + trees that point to gold

This podcast includes the following stories:

1. World's 'largest illegal dolphin slaughter'
2. Battle for control of airline emissions
3. My top environmental web picks
4. Banning damaging PIB dumping at sea
5. Australian bushfires: No climate change link, says PM
6. Trees that point to gold

Listen to more CoolGreen episodes here

Undercover dolphin slaughter footage (Jim Wickens/Mundo Azul/ITV News)

Jim Wickens' account of being shipwrecked

CSI Landfill (BBC Costing the Earth)

Podcast #48: Global reaction to the IPCC report, the latest on detained Greenpeace activists + turbine rock

This podcast includes the following stories:

1. Reaction around the world to the IPCC's fifth climate report
2. My top environmental web picks
3. Latest on 30 Greenpeace activists detained in Russia
4. Using goats at green mowers
5. The great gig in the sky (actually on a wind turbine)

Listen to more CoolGreen episodes here

Crowdsourcing climate data from smart phones (BBC Inside Science)
Interactive: How hot will it get in your lifetime? (Guardian)
Bill McKibben on his latest book (PRI Living On Earth)

Can we really divest fossil fuels?

There is a student movement sweeping college campuses in the US. It calls for colleges to pull their investments - or to divest - from fossil fuel companies.

At least 300 schools have active campaigns - some bigger than others, and some further along than others, but still 300 is impressive.

Their manifesto is an article by the journalist-turned-activist Bill McKibben which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine almost a year ago. It argues that divestment on college campuses helped bring about the end of Apartheid, so why not climate change?

Podcast #47: The Divest movement sweeping the US, Singapore haze + The month's best environmental web picks

This podcast includes the following stories:

1. The Divest Fossil Fuel movement sweeping the US
2. My top environmental web picks
3. Singapore battles the dreaded haze
4. Britain's energy quagmire
5. A farmer responds to the suggestion of feeding his cows insects

Listen to more CoolGreen episodes here

Podcast #46: Astronaut Chris Hadfield bows out, Why we should eat more insects + Our vocal ancestors

This podcast includes the following stories:

1. Astronaut Chris Hadfield returns to Earth a celebrity
2. Timetable agreed for ending EU fish discards
3. Eat insects, says UN
4. Top picks in environmental news
5. Peugeot pioneers air-powered car
6. Report: 97% of scientists agree on man-made global warming
7. Baboons reveal clues about our vocal ancestors 

Listen to more CoolGreen episodes here

Podcast #45: Is the US oil industry causing quakes? Pope Francis the Green + Teeny weeny froglets

This podcast includes the following stories:

1. Can pumping wastewater from the oil industry underground cause earthquakes?
2. The ExxonMobil pipeline spill in Arkansas
3. Combatting ash dieback by planting more trees
4. Stricter sulphur limits for car fuels in the US
5. Are MSC-labelled fish being mislabelled? (Answer: No)
6. Will Pope Francis be the greenest pontiff yet?
7. Breeding frogs in captivity to save a species 

Listen to more CoolGreen episodes here

The road ahead: More extreme weather?

Photo by Les Dunford

Extreme weather increasingly prompts talk of climate change and the link between the two.

We saw that recently with Hurricane Sandy in the US, and before that with the spate of droughts and wildfires. Australians pondered whether the record temperatures seen at the start of the year will become a more regular occurrence.

Now it is the turn of Britons. The British Isles, which are normally basking in spring sunshine at this time of year, are instead lying under several feet of snow. Thousands went without power, lambs are dying in the fields and there was the usual 'travel chaos'.

It was all timed nicely to coincide with the departure of the government's chief scientist, who drew the link with climate change as his farewell message.