The Paris Climate Agreement was put in place to prevent catastrophic and runaway global warming. And since taking office, President Trump has been threatening to pull the U.S. out of it. Earlier this month, he made it official. 

On this episode we hear from the man who helped put the U.S. in the agreement in the first place. Todd Stern was President Obama’s chief climate negotiator and now he's a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. 

President Trump came into office promising to save coal and coal jobs. Instead, the industry has continued to slide. The question now is--how far will it go?

The coal industry once employed hundreds of thousands of workers. Now, it's just about 50,000. And eight coal companies have declared bankruptcies in the last year. The latest is Murray Energy, the biggest privately held coal mining company in the country. 

We check in on the state of the coal in the Trump era with Taylor Kuykendall who covers the industry for S&P Global Market Intelligence. 

President Trump says a key phone call at the center of the Ukraine scandal was Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s idea. But Perry asserts that in his conversations with Trump, “not once, as God as my witness, not once was a Biden name ever mentioned." 

On this episode we connect the dots between Perry and Ukraine with Jeff Brady, energy reporter for NPR. Get your whiteboards out. There are a lot of names. 

Last month, the USDA quietly issued a new rule changing meat inspection standards for pork. Not only would the new rule mean slaughter houses could run their processing lines as fast as they want, it would also change who does the inspecting, giving the pork producers themselves a bigger role in the process.

We talk with Tom Philpott, food and agriculture reporter for Mother Jones magazine, about what the changes could mean for the safety of food and workers.

How do you change the minds of climate deniers and people -- say the President -- who doubt the scientific process in general? We ask a philosopher of science for some answers.

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. He has written books about defending science and fighting back against “alternative facts.”

Now, McIntyre is out on the road talking to flat earth theorists and people who don’t accept current climate science. 

There wasn't a single question about global warming in the 2016 presidential debates. Will 2020 be different?

There are 23 Democrats vying for their party's nomination. Who has a plan to fight climate change (and who doesn't)? And what will President Trump's eventual Democratic challenger say on the subject?

Today take a look at where the candidates stand on climate change with Emily Holden, environment reporter for the Guardian.

President Trump's push to have oil and gas drilling on public lands has hit some snags lately. A federal court recently halted leasing on 300,000 acres of public land in Wyoming after the court ruled the administration hadn't adequately considered climate change on its decision to lease the land. And late last week, a federal judge ruled Trump's efforts to lift an Obama era ban on drilling in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans was unlawful. But despite all this, companies are still racing to drill on America's public land with the administration's blessing. So what does this look like on the ground? On this episode we find out.

Our guest is Rachel Leven, a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity. She’s been spending time in one of the hottest drilling spots in North America and wrote an expose about what happens when drilling overwhelms the agency tasked with protecting America’s lands.  

What happens when environmental laws and rules aren't enforced? When the environmental cops just aren't on the beat?

Under Trump, EPA inspections have fallen to a 10-year low.
On this episode, we hear from Juliet Eilperin who has covered this story for The Washington Post.

Why does the EPA need inspections, penalties and prosecutions? And how is the view of the EPA's role changing under the Trump administration? 

This week we're bringing you a interview with NPR's Howard Berkes about the proliferation of black lung disease among coal miners in Appalachia. It comes from our sister podcast called Energy Explained, produced by the public radio collaboration StateImpact Pennsylvania  The interview covers not just this administration's current policies on coal mine safety but those of previous administrations. And it really is an important piece of reporting that Berkes and his team did. 

The federal government is the nation's largest landowner, managing 500 million acres under the Department of the Interior. And while some expect that America's public lands are managed for the benefit and enjoyment of the people, others say the Trump administration has allowed interests like energy development to lead land policy.

Trump's first interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, literally rode into Washington on a horse a couple of years ago promising to be a land steward in the style of President Theodore Roosevelt. More recently, he signed his resignation letter in a now infamous, barely legible, chunky red pen. On this episode, we take stock of Zinke's legacy and what it means for the country's public lands. Our guest is Collin O'Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation. He wrote a recent opinion piece about Zinke in the Washington Post.  

Historically, polls have shown that environmentalists are terrible at voting. In the 2014 midterm election, more than 15 million environmentalists didn't show up on Election Day. And to be clear, all of them were already registered and already committed to environmental issues. So why are they so bad at voting? And will they turn out in the midterm elections?

We dig into the topic with Nathaniel Stinnett, founder of the non-partisan organization, Environmental Voter Project. He has a plan for getting environmentalists to the polls on November 6th.

You’ve probably heard by now that, according to a new UN report, the world has just over a decade to get climate change under control before it’s too late. And the report says we need a profound transformation to get there.

The report has got us thinking about an episode we aired last year about what life on Earth could look like with the worst case scenario. 

David Wallace-Wells wrote an article last summer entitled “The Uninhabitable Earth.” It was the most widely read article in the online history of New York Magazine. Its imagined future was so grim, it spawned response articles like “Are we as doomed as that New York Magazine Article Says?” in the Atlantic Magazine.

On this episode, we talk to Wallace-Wells, to find out -- is it really as bad as all that?

People of faith are joining the ranks of the People Climate Movement, which takes to the streets this weekend demanding action. One religious leader tells us why climate change is becoming a top priority.

Fletcher Harper is an Episcopal priest and the executive director of GreenFaith, a member organization of the People's Climate Movement. 

When Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act on December 28, 1973, it made the United States the only nation on Earth to declare a basic right of existence for species other than our own. Currently, the Act protects more than 1,600 species across the country. Now, the landmark legislation is being targeted by industry, with support from the GOP. What happens next could determine the fate of hundreds of endangered species. 

On this episode, we talk about the future of the Endangered Species Act with Jennifer Kahn. She wrote an article published in The New York Times magazine earlier this year titled, Should Some Species be Allowed to Die Out?

Before he was EPA administrator, before he was Oklahoma's attorney general, before he was even a state senator, Scott Pruitt was an unknown attorney in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. What do Scott Pruitt's early days in public life tell us about his beliefs and motivations as he sets about dismantling EPA regulations?

On this episode, we talk to two reporters who dug into this question to find out more about the man President Donald Trump picked to lead the EPA. Joe Wertz is a reporter for State Impact Oklahoma and Tom Dreisbach is a producer for the NPR podcast Embedded.

From its inception, science has been at the core of the EPA’s mission. It’s used science about the health effects of industrial pollution to make our air and water cleaner. But EPA administrator Scott Pruitt wants to limit what kinds of research the agency can use when making regulations. To that end, he has introduced the Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science rule. Transparency--sounds pretty good, right? But with this new rule, the agency would limit what kinds of research it can use when making regulations. EPA scientists would no longer be allowed to use studies that don’t make their raw data available to the public. That includes most public health studies because these often use confidential patient information that is generally shielded from public view.

On top of that, the rule would exempt certain types of industry-funded science. This has many scientists furious. Nearly 1,000 of them signed a letter calling the proposal a way to run “political interference in science-based decision making.”

To learn more about this issue, we turned to someone who ran a big science program at the EPA. Bernard Goldstein was assistant administrator for research and development at the agency during the Reagan administration. He’s now a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.

Rolling back regulations is fundamental to the philosophy of the Trump administration. And a lot of the action has been directed towards environmental regulations. According to a review done by the Washington Post, 63 environmental rules have been targeted across all agencies. That’s more than other policy area. So what’s the case for environmental regulations? Do they work? Do they make our lives better in any measurable way? We hear a lot from the Trump administration about how regulations are job-killers, but aren’t they also life-savers?

On Tuesday, administrator Scott Pruitt signed the paperwork to revoke the Clean Power Plan. But what is the case for its repeal? And what happens next in the search to rein in carbon dioxide pollution?We’ve heard from many of the proponents of the Clean Power Plan over the past few months, but on this week’s episode, we talk to someone who opposed it and hear why he thought it should have never been written in the first place. Jeff Holmstead has worked on environmental issues for previous Republican administrations, including a stint as assistant administrator for air and radiation at the EPA under George W. Bush. 

Only 11 percent of conservative Republicans say climate scientists understand the causes of climate change very well. So, can anything change their minds? One conservative says ‘yes’. Bob Inglis is a former South Carolina Republican congressman who now heads a group called republicEN.org which aims to promote ‘free market’ solutions to climate change.

Last week — to the surprise of no one — Donald Trump issued an executive order to begin dismantling the Clean Power Plan. But the country's keystone rule on climate change isn't dead yet.

Trump’s first months in office have left us with more questions than answers. But on environmental policy, some themes are emerging that will likely shape a lot of what’s to come. In this week’s episode, we dig into three key storylines to watch with Rebecca Leber of Mother Jones and The Atlantic’s Rob Meyer. 

Trump’s big push to rollback federal regulations could impact everything from the price of healthcare to the size and scope of the EPA. It might also leave the USDA and FDA with fewer powers on food safety.

Trumpism may not be the most coherent of political philosophies. But when White House strategist Steve Bannon recently told a crowd of conservative activists that one of their major goals is “deconstruction of the administrative state,” he brought into focus a theme that may very well come to define a large part of the Trump era. In fact, we’re already starting to see it take shape at the Environmental Protection Agency.

On everything from healthcare to immigration, President Trump has been busy doing 180s on Obama-era policy. This week, he set his sights on a controversial expansion of the Clean Water Act known as the Waters of the U.S. Rule, or WOTUS. But pulling the plug might not be so easy.

There are still chapters to be written in the larger fight over the Dakota Access pipeline. But as of Thursday, the months-long protest encampment at Standing Rock is no more. So what have we learned? And could the historic protest be a prelude to larger national conversations on energy, Native American sovereignty and climate change?