Costing The Earth

The powerful gene editing technique CRISPR that allows us to rewrite DNA may soon provide a tool to help save our planet’s biodiversity. CRISPR has been described as ‘molecular scissors’ and is used to make targeted, precise changes to the DNA of plants and animals, with all the ethical questions it raises. Since it was developed by scientists 9 nine years ago, research into uses of CRISPR has been increasing in medicine and agriculture, as well as entering the fields of public health and environmental conservation, where genetic engineering had previously not been a realistic possibility. With the threat of climate change and the loss of species and habitats worldwide, gene editing has the potential to be able to help revive endangered species, and help them adapt to changing temperatures. And by combining CRISPR with a ‘gene drive’ – a technique that forces genes to spread through a population, we now have the ability to bend the rules of natural selection and control populations of invasive species or a pe

Realising your pet cat has brought home a 'gift' or perhaps a snack they plan to eat in front of you is never pleasant. Many owners will scramble to intercept and release the poor prey but that may be too little, too late. Cats have been blamed for an estimated 100million wildlife kills in the UK each Spring and Summer but it's hard to know what really goes on when they're out on the prowl at night. Birds, mammals, insects, amphibians...and sometimes the odd snake in some cases...but others don't seem fussed at all. Scientists have been monitoring and logging cat kills to build a clearer picture of their behaviour and take this beyond what they choose to bring home. Miranda Krestovnikoff explores the factors that may influence a cat's desire to kill and speaks to Hannah Lockwood from the University of Derby whose 'What the Cat Dragged In' project charting hundreds of cats and even using cameras to reveal the hidden truth about their nocturnal behaviour. She hears about more drastic measures and proposals outs

Dame Glenys Stacey is charged with the job of keeping the government on track toward a greener future. She talks to Tom Heap in her first interview as the head of the new Office for Environmental Protection.If public bodies in England such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and local authorities fail to keep rivers clean and city air breathable then it will be Glenys Stacey who will try to make them to do better She was a well respected regulator of examinations at Ofqual and has plenty of experience of holding authorities to account, but does she have the powers and budget to keep the government green?Producer: Alasdair Cross

Dr Seuss' fable of needless consumerism and environmental ruin, The Lorax, is half a century old this year. The 'shortish, brownish, oldish and mossy' character who 'speaks for the trees' increasingly features on placards at demos. Michael Rosen looks at the book's influence on the modern environmental movement and charts its journey from ignored to censored, embraced by the mainstream and inevitably turned into a Hollywood movie and used to sell SUVs.With Children's Laureate Cressida Cowell, Writer George Monbiot, Economist Kate Raworth, Playwright David Greig, Advertising 'guru' Rory Sutherland, Ben Stewart from Greenpeace, Steve Brezzo, Josh Golin, Terri Birkett and more.Producer: Ellie Richold

How has one year of lockdown changed our environment in the UK and around the world? Tom Heap is joined by air quality expert, Ally Lewis, psychologist Lorraine Whitmarsh and the BBC's South Korea correspondent, Laura Bicker to find out how we- and the natural world- have been changed by the pandemic.Producer: Maggie Latham

The COP26 conference in Glasgow in November is going to be a very important moment in tackling climate change. We are currently not on track to meet the goal of limiting global temperature rise to between 1.5 and 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we need to halve total emissions by the end of 2030 if we’re to be on track to hit the 1.5 degree target and avoid the worst effects of a changing climate. To close the gap between pledges and action, countries need to sign up to policies and strategies that start to reduce emissions now. This is the challenge for the summit in Glasgow. Tom Heap is joined in the studio by Nigel Topping, the High Level Climate Action Champion for COP26, to discuss the ambition of the summit and the momentum that is building not just among governments but cities, investors and businesses to deliver net zero by mid-century. They hear from three experts who will give us real world practical solutions to achieve far-rea

In September at the UN General Assembly China announced that it will aim for carbon neutrality by 2060. Celia Hatton and guests discuss how China might meet this target, and what this means for the world. With Barbara Finamore, Senior Strategic Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sha Yu, Co-Director of the China Program at the Centre of Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland, and Steve Tsang, Director of China Institute at SOAS University of London.Producer: Toby Field

As some places in the world become too hot for humans to live, Tom Heap explores the cost to the environment of air conditioning.Air conditioning is one of the fastest growing sources of energy consumption, but it's already placing enormous strains on power grids, while also contributing to climate change. Across the world, building codes are making it virtually impossible to build new offices without it, and are setting "comfort standards" that don't take account of geography, climate or culture. As a result some of the hottest places in the world, such as Qatar, have buildings that are so cool that workers shiver and have to bring warm clothing to work. Meanwhile poor countries like Sudan have abandoned traditional architecture which allow a degree of natural cooling in favour of modern international building styles that require air conditioning in order to function. Which might be fine, except that the capital has frequent electricity blackouts which turn off the air conditioning and makes buildings unbear

As our planet continues to warm, and climate issues move rapidly up the political agenda, the environmental movement itself is also changing shape.In the second of a two-part series looking at the past, present and future of the environmental movement, Journalist and Black and Green Ambassador Jasmine Ketibuah-Foley looks to the future. Speaking to academics, futurologists, and the activists and campaigners on the front lines, she asks how things are changing, who is changing them, and what they'll need to do to make sure the message gets through. From tactics to technology, from local to global, and from the affluent western world to some of the places climate change is hitting hardest, Jasmine follows the campaign for climate justice into the coming decades, and finds out what it might look like.Produced by Emily Knight

It's fifty years since the first blossoming of environmental campaign groups. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the organisation which was eventually to become the Green Party were all set up in the early 1970s - all within just a few years of each other. In part 1 of this two-part series, Tom Heap takes a look back over the last half century of environmental protest. He talks to some of the big names involved in green campaigning - from the early days up to the present and the rise of Extinction Rebellion. He asks what the movement has achieved and what challenges still lie ahead.Producer: Emma Campbell

Last year wildfires in the Amazon made headlines news. This year we've hardly heard about them - but that doesn't mean they're not happening. In fact the number of rainforest fires in Brazil rose by almost 20% in June, reaching a 13 year high, according to government data. Some estimates now point to 2020 being an even worse year for forest destruction than 2019. Meanwhile, from California to Siberia, fires have been devastating landscapes and throwing more greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere. In this programme, Lucy Siegle and a panel of experts explore the causes of fires around the world, and asks what can be done to tackle them.Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Emma Campbell.

Record-breaking temperatures and months of severe drought fuelled a series of massive bushfires across Australia last winter. Dozens of people died and millions of hectares of bushland and forest were burnt.Australia's plant and animal life are well adapted to natural fire but the additional burden of climate change ensured that many of the fires were more intense and widespread than ever before. Much of the country's unique fauna had nowhere to hide.Peter Hadfield travels through the fire-ravaged regions of New South Wales to discover how local people are working to return injured animals to the wild and prepare habitats for a future that can only get hotter.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Do you know how much water you use? Despite campaigns to reduce our personal water usage from around 143 litres each per day to closer to 100, it's not improving. Meanwhile Tom Heap has discovered that an innovation to a product we use every day, an innovation which promised to save water is actually making things worse. Billions of litres are being wasted every week – enough to supply the cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Belfast combined – welcome to the Great Leaky Loo Scandal. We reveal how this is happening and what can be done. Tom gets a revealing look behind the scenes at a plumbing manufacturer where flushing systems are tested and the science of 'solids discharge' is analysed. When water is being abstracted from rivers and being treated to meet our demands we ask if we need to take the resource more seriously. Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock for BBC Audio in Bristol

Ellen Husain investigates the presence of pathoghens in the marine environment. She learns how surfers and regular sea swimmers may be more likely to have anti-microbial resistant bacteria in their bodies, and finds out about the ways in which antibiotics find their way into our oceans. Is the way we manage our seas actually fuelling the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria and increasing the risk of untreatable disease in future?Producer: Emma Campbell

With an ever greater demand for more housing, and Boris Johnson calling for the country to "build buld bulid" post lockdown, Peter Gibbs looks at current trends in house-building. Are the government's plans for "garden communities" as environmentally-friendly as they sound? And how could developers be encouraged to build in a way which incorporates nature rather than squeezing it out? Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Emma Campbell.

Lockdown saw many more people jumping on bikes and walking - as much as a way to get out of the house as get around - but pollution levels dropped and nature could be heard without the background roar of traffic. Jheni Osman asks if this the way it could or should be? Has this given us a new way of thinking about how we get around and can city leaders bank on this to change the infrastructure to be 'car free'?After 100 years of city design being built around the private car, this is a rare opportunity to bank on the behaviour change to reduce pollution, improve air quality and get more of us active. Temporary moves to give over more road space to public transport, bikes and pedestrians may give way to more permanent measures and has accelerated plans for 'Car Free Cities'. Jheni explores models that have been applied elsewhere, looks at changes coming in across Milan, Bristol and Birmingham and asks what's needed to make them work? Will we be zooming about on e-scooters and goods transported underground inste

Just a few months ago politicians across the spectrum were promising trees, glorious trees, in abundance. In an unlikely game of Top Trumps the numbers of trees promised reached into billions, ultimately settling at an ambitious promise of 30,000 hectares a year by 2025.So, how are we going to reach this target over the next 5 years and is it even the right goal? Things have not begun well with thousands of saplings left to rot after they could not be planted due to coronavirus restrictions and campaigners condemning the government targets as ‘inadequate’. At the same time many experts urge caution as the current push for more trees could result in trees being planted on land which should be used for agriculture or on landscapes which are important carbon stores such as peatland.Even if we can find the space we may not have the tree stocks or the skilled workforce to create sustainable woodlands. The current coronavirus crisis has highlighted just how vulnerable the UK nursery industry is without long term pl

What's the best way to prevent flooding? Caz Graham finds out whether there might be environmental alternatives to building ever-higher flood defences. She talks to a campaign group in Kendal in Cumbria, where there are multi-million pound plans to build flood barriers through the town centre, and asks the Environment Agency whether there could be more imaginative alternatives. Is Natural Flood Management the answer? Caz talks to academics and experts to find out what new solutions there might be, and what other countries are doing.Produced by Emma Campbell. Photograph by Stuart Atkinson.CORRECTION 22/06/2020 In the programme we said: "Those with doubts about the Environment Agency’s walls point to alternative strategies like Natural Flood Management – which holds water further upstream, slowing the flow into town, so the flood peak is lower. That’s phase 3 of the Environment Agency’s plan, and gets a tiny fraction of the £76 million budget – just £800,000." In fact the £800,000 for Natural Flood Managemen

A decade ago, many people saw carbon offsetting as an excuse for carrying on bad behaviour. Need to fly? I can still fly ... look at me - I'm not so bad after all. And the critics lined up to shoot it down. So what has changed, asks Tom Heap, and is it something we should all be doing? With contributions from Juliet Davenport of Good Energy, Charlotte Ashton in Zimbabwe, Tim Brown of Tradewater, Mike Childs from Friends of the Earth and Professor Julia Jones who tells us about her experience of conservation projects in Madagascar.The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Sound is what the world does. From the tiniest bugs to the largest whales, animals use sound to communicate, for example, they sing to attract a mate and establish a territory. But this is all happening against a background of man-made noise that was, until the last few weeks, increasing in volume all the time. So what happens if you can’t hear or make yourself heard or you are too stressed or distracted to behave normally? Andy Radford, Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Bristol explores the impact of this global pollutant and the mitigation measures that could help. Producer: Sarah Blunt