Costing the Earth

With planes grounded, airports shut and chaos on the roads, last winter was the harshest in a century.

Temperatures plummeted to minus 22 degrees in Scotland and the whole of the UK was covered in a thick blanket of snow and ice for weeks. Britain was brought to a standstill.

It is estimated that the cold weather cost the economy around £700 million; energy demand rocketed with demand for gas breaking all records; 60,000 miles of roads were gritted; thousands of schools were shut.

Weather forecasters are unsure if the last two winters are the shape of things to come, or whether the country suffered freak conditions.

With winter 2011 approaching, Tom Heap finds out what preparations are being made to ensure the country's transport infrastructure, power stations, emergency services and food retailers are ready for another big freeze.

Producer: Martin Poyntz-Roberts.

Britain's electricity grid needs replacing. Our old power network is approaching obsolesence. That means that there's a real threat of a new army of pylons spreading out across some of our most beautiful landscapes.

Since the advent of electricity, power cables have spread out from large, centrally-located coal-fired power stations. In the future we're going to be extracting our power from small sources dotted around the periphery of the country- wind, wave and hydro-electric stations far from the big power users of the major cities. To cope with this change a new national grid will have to be constructed. The shape of that grid and the method for transferring power is already provoking controversy. How acceptable are large pylons in our National Parks? How much more expensive is an underground cable? Tom Heap investigates the options.

Five hundred years ago the Spanish Conquistadors enslaved the population of South America in their desperate efforts to squeeze more gold and silver from the mines of Peru, Chile and Mexico.

Today the industry is booming again, driven by the global demand for copper and the rising price of precious metals. New technology has made the industry safer for workers but the sensitive environment of the Andes is under threat from the water demands of the mining process.

What you hear is not necessarily what you're getting. We all have our pet noise hates, but experts tell us that the nuisance caused by noise depends on a number of factors and certainly not just volume. For this week's Costing The Earth, Tom Heap consults the experts and discovers that our response to noise is not only subjective, it is easily influenced by context and even what we can see.

Tom also looks at the environmental impact of major construction projects and asks what more could be done to limit the damage. Money, politics and diligent campaigning all have a part to play in ensuring that the latest technology is brought into play. Throw enough money at the problem and major projects like the High Speed rail line between London and Birmingham be significantly quieter and less disruptive than campaigners fear.

Take a walk through the narrow streets of Sana'a, capital of Yemen and you'll come across the last remaining radish gardens. These small bursts of greenery amidst the desert dust are all that remain of a system that once fed and watered the city. At the height of Arabic science and ingenuity elaborate irrigation systems brought water into the mosques to wash the faithful. The used water was then diverted into large gardens of fabulous fertility.

Today Yemen is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis provoked largely by a chronic shortage of water. A fast expanding population coupled with a diversion of scarce water for the production of the narcotic drug, Khat has pushed the country's water supply to the limit. Reporter Leana Hosea has visited Yemen to find out if the wisdom of the Arabic engineers of the past can help bring water back to this parched nation.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

Scientists are looking at novel ways to halt sea-level rise and reverse global warming, but not the way in which Miranda Krestovnikoff is attempting to do her bit on Exmouth Beach...

One idea proposed was to flood lowing lying parts of the planet - parts of the Sahara desert in order to accomodate rising sea level caused by global warming and the melting of ice-sheets and glaciers. An idea quickly dismissed by climate scientist Tim Lenton who joins Miranda on the beach as she attempts to empty the water from the ocean.

Futuristic visions of the sky filled with trillions of tiny mirrors and giant man-made clouds over the oceans to reflect the power of the sun are just two ideas scientists have come up with in their quest to make a giant sunscreen for the planet and to try and cool the climate.

And just next month a team of scientists from universities in the UK are carrying out an experiment to see if they can hoist a giant hosepipe one kilometre into the air. If successful they will attempt to upscale the experiment. The aim is to see if they can extend the pipe up to 20km should they ever need to spray aerosol particles into the air to recreate the effects of a volcanic eruption. Matt Watson leads the project and he explains how successful Mount Pinatubo was in lowering the earth's temperature for two years after it erupted.

Miranda Krestovnikoff investigates which futuristic geoengineering concepts could become a reality if we continue to fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and what impact messing about with the climate could potentially have on weather systems across the globe.

British air quality consistently breaches European regulations. It's not just London or the other big cities, towns the length and breadth of the country suffer from filthy air. In this week's 'Costing the Earth' Tom Heap asks what individuals can do to improve the quality of the air they breathe.

The first step is to find out where air quality is at its worst. New techniques, pioneered by Lancaster University, use the pollution-attracting powers of trees to allow scientists to draw up accurate pollution maps of urban areas. Combined with smartphone APPs they give every pedestrian the power to avoid pollution hotspots. Air pollution can be incredibly localised. Even by walking on a parallel street you can save your lungs from the worst of urban pollution.

These new ideas also open up the possibility of citizen control of air quality. The right trees planted in the right part of the street can reduce pollution loadings by up to 40%, offering communities a real chance to change their neighbourhood. Even individuals can have an effect. Chemists at Sheffield University in conjunction with Helen Storey at the London College of Fashion are developing the idea of pollution-munching clothes. Wear some jeans sprayed with a titanium catalyst and you could remove pollution from the air as you walk.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

In tonight's Costing The Earth Tom Heap tucks into a portion of locusts and asks if eating insects is good for his diet and better for the planet than a piece of steak.

Bugs such as crickets and caterpillars can convert food into protein at a more efficient rate than livestock, and with valuable agricultural land being overgrazed around the world, we could soon be looking for an alternative food supply. One suggestion is that insects have a role to play in feeding the world. They are easy to raise since farming insects has a low impact on the environment, and once over any cultural taboos we may have as diners, they are nutritionally valuable.

Tom Heap gets stuck in to a locust stir-fry in Bristol before heading off to the Netherlands to witness the latest cutting-edge research into raising insects where he also tries a mealworm cookie: a biscuit that could potentially deliver a day's protein ration in one hit to famine stricken areas of the world.

He then visits a farm of the future where row upon row of crickets and various pupae are being raised. They are currently destined for pet shops to be used as animal food, but could soon be turning up on a supermarket shelf near you.

Beetle burger anyone?

Deep beneath southern Europe there stretches a 500 kilometre long subterranean world. Underground rivers and vast caverns are home to unique and unusual species like the blind salamander and the freshwater sponge. Barely explored, the caves of Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Albania are facing up to a rash of environmental threats.

In Costing the Earth Tom Heap will be joining caver and Whitley Award-winning biologist, Jana Bedek to explore the caves, spot the wildlife and witness the destruction. Waste dumping and agricultural pollution are damaging waterways all through the cave system but it's in Croatia that some of the toughest challenges exist. Preparing for European Union membership the country is pushing ahead with the development of highways and hydro-electric plants. The construction is threatening some of the most valuable wildlife sites on the continent but the damage is invisible to most local people and all but the most adventurous of visitors.

Is damage unavoidable in the rush to join the EU or does Croatia risk losing its natural foundations?

Take the venom from a scorpion, the suckers from a starfish and the sting from a bee. You won't create a spell to turn a prince into a frog but you might just find a new anti-asthma spray, a way to prevent the failure of heart by-passes or the answer to drug-resistant bacteria

Rapid advances in genetic research are throwing open the medical treasure chest of the natural world. Chemicals that perform a clear function for a plant or animal can be isolated, studied and, in some cases, applied to complex medical problems.

This is obviously good news for patients but could it also be good news for endangered wildlife? Could we soon be concentrating our limited conservation resources on saving the plants and animals that offer up something to humanity?

Dr. Alice Roberts and medical writer John Naish explore nature's medicine cabinet and consider the ethical dilemmas.

California has a rapidly expanding population, one of the world's most important agricultural zones and a chronic lack of water. That contradiction has led to 70 years of wrangling punctuated by outbursts of violence and corruption.

A new plan is being drawn up which is intended to resolve the outstanding problems once and for all, finding a balance between the needs of farmers, consumers and the environment.

Travelling from one of the primary sources of the state's water in the far north to the threatened landscape of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Tom Heap hears the voices of those who've spent their lives in these stunning landscapes, feeling themselves at the mercy of those in power.

James Cameron and Sigourney Weaver are the latest to wade into the battle to stop the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil but it seems celebrity causes are less likely to win ecological battles than they were 20 years ago and with oil and gas prices spiralling big dams are back on the menu everywhere.

In the 1990s Sting and the Xingu tribal people succeeded in creating enough worldwide protest to stop the Belo Monte dam being put into construction. Since then the World Bank has stepped away from financing big dams, distancing itself from projects which have often caused as many problems as they solve.

One fifth of the world's freshwater is found in the Amazon. The Belo Monte dam will divert a significant amount of the Xingu river flooding 640km including much of the city of Altamira and displacing upwards of 20,000 people. It will cost $17 billion and environmentalists argue that this is only viable because it will lead the way for dams further upstream which could produce far more energy and because the electricity will power aluminium smelters and iron ore mines. They also site the devastating impact on wildlife and migratory fish which are staples for indigenous tribes, a likely increase in malaria from the stagnant water and significant methane release from the river bed as it dries.

The Brazilian government, and many Brazilian people, argue that the dam is absolutely necessary and that this is renewable energy. With one of the world's fastest growing economies they need fuel, and hydro already provides 80% of the country's energy needs. Should privileged Western stars be listened to when they may not fully understand the issues and what is more important to the environment movement, conservation or carbon?

Take your average teenagers, Trudy (13, loves sports and Twilight), Liam (16, loves computer games) and Craig (19, loves cars). So much of what they enjoy seems to be energy intensive but do this demographic really use more power? How do you get them to care about the environment they are going to inherit? That is the experiment Birmingham University are about to undertake. Can computer games, mobile alerts and social media create a generation of greens or are they already ahead of the curve? Farmworld is the most popular application on Facebook but could a real world equivalent to keeping and trading your animals online really help to change attitudes? Nestle have committed themselves to making the palm oil they use more eco-friendly after a Greenpeace spoof kitkat advert went viral but can teenagers pre-occupation with all things online always produce such results. And should the kids really have to shoulder the responsibility, after all it was probably their gas guzzling, gadget consuming baby boomer parents and grandparents that created the problem. The UK Youth Climate Coalition is launching a long-term campaign, which will see all 650 Members of Parliament in the UK 'adopted' by a young person in their constituency, in an attempt to keep climate change at the top of their agenda. How successful will their campaign be, even if the kids are alright can they really affect change at the top.

It used to be a treat but now a chocolate bar is one of the cheapest ways to fill up. Chocolate is the unlikely substance at the heart of commodity wars. Cocoa has been reported to be more valuable than gold but will this mean the end of the nation's coffee break.

Over-farming has caused problems in chocolate producing countries in Africa and South America. The pressure to produce cheap cocoa has meant farmers have failed to replant and replenish. Soil has become unusable and mature trees are now reaching the end of their life cycle. Fair trade has been forced on even the biggest producers like Nestle as the only means to get the raw product. But, is it too little too late and is this late interest a real commitment to fair deals for farmers and their land?

There is concern that speculation by financial traders has helped to push up food prices worldwide, creating an unsustainable bubble that makes it even harder for many in the developing world to afford to eat. Workers in the UK have also felt the impact - Burton's Foods blamed higher cocoa and wheat prices for the closure of its Wirral factory - where Wagon Wheels and Jammie Dodgers are made - with the loss of over 400 jobs.

Palm oil is another growing problem. Cheap, easy to grow and lucrative, many cocoa farmers have switched to this crop and turned their land over to monoculture. Costing the Earth investigates the efforts to keep our favourite treat going and asks if this is the first commodity of many to succumb to over-production and unrealistically cheap market prices.

From the atolls of the Pacific to the Thames Estuary, shipwrecks of World War Two litter the oceans. After seventy years rust is starting to take its toll, breaching steel hulls and sending cargoes of munitions, chemicals and oil into the environment.

For decades governments have turned a blind eye to the risk, anxious to avoid responsibility for ships sunk in foreign waters. However, as the number of pollution incidents rises it's becoming vital for expertise in underwater salvage to be pooled in a worldwide effort to identify and remediate the most dangerous wrecks.

Tom Heap investigates the latest salvage techniques and asks if the cancellation of funding for coastguard rescue tugs could add to the risk of future wrecks in British waters.

President Obama described Deepwater Horizon as America's worst environmental disaster. If that was true why have fish numbers in the Gulf massively increased since the blow-out?

One year on from the disaster Tom Heap travels through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in search of the true economic and environmental impact of the spill. Did the political and media reaction cause more damage to the region than the accident itself?

He'll also be asking what effect the reaction to the disaster could have on Britain's plans for deep water drilling.

Birmingham City Council is already fitting solar to 10,000 homes and farmers with more than 35 acres had hoped to earn as much as £50,000 a year harvesting solar energy. But, the government now seems to be backtracking on its promise of large subsidies. Spain's solar industry recently crumbled due to the false economics of government funding and they have a lot more sunshine than the UK. Germany too, which has the world's largest market for solar, has recently had to dramatically decrease promised feed in tariffs in order to prevent an unsustainable bubble.

Detractors of solar argue that even if we covered the country in panels we would only produce the energy of a handful of power plants. Nevertheless the limited FIT offer is heralding a 'goldrush' in parts of the South West who hope to revive the local economy. Once the offer ends the industry must be able to sustain itself but in the UK is the latest renewable hot ticket worth the gamble? Even in sunny Cornwall five figure planning application fees have put off many investors and new uncertainty over feed in tariffs has stalled planned projects.

There are those who believe covering the roofs of some of our most loved National Trust Institutions like Dunster Castle with panels will be an expensive mistake. Others believe that any government or public body influence will only falsely inflate and then ultimately suppress the real value of solar.

As ever the industry relies on growing take up making technology cheaper and increased funding for research increasing efficiency even in Britain's darkest parts. Low cost organic solar cells being developed at Cambridge University could be the answer but can we afford to wait for them to come online.

The threat to wildlife from invasive species is now one of the greatest across the world and it is growing. Killer shrimp are the latest non-native species to be found in a formerly quiet and respectable area of Cambridgeshire. In the UK we have endlessly debated the problem of the grey squirrel and Japanese knotweed but in Spain the invaders are being driven out permanently. Can their plan work and would eradication return native species to abundance or simply create new problems in our ecosystems?

Recent studies suggest the rise in invasive species stems from international trade. Global warming has also contributed to species migration and survival in the wild. The Spanish authorities have drawn up a list of 168 offending species including the raccoon and mink, zebra mussels, and one of the worse offenders the ruddy duck.

In New Zealand rats are driving the yellowhead bird to extinction and the chrytrid fungi is causing a worldwide decline in amphibians but can species really recover after competition is successfully eradicated? It seems that in some cases they can. The near extinct black vented shearwater is recovering on a Mexican island after the eradication of cats, goats and sheep. The wallaby is also recovering after red fox were taken out in Australia.

However, there are also a growing number of scientists who argue that to eradicate invasives is costly, cruel and ultimately unnecessary. In Puerto Rico invasive species have been the only plant and wildlife able to survive in eroded soils. Their encroachment has returned lifeless areas to thriving jungles, eventually providing a more encouraging environment for native species to return.

If we can't beat them then it may even be time to learn from these ecological survivors. Producer Helen Lennard Repeated on 31:03:2011 13:31:00.

Britain is running out of power. Ten new nuclear reactors were supposed to provide the solution. In this week's 'Costing the Earth' Tom Heap asks if the events in Japan have dealt a fatal blow to the future of the industry.

Tom will be examining the changes in safety regimes that may be provoked by the ongoing disaster. He'll also be asking if the economic case for nuclear has changed and looking ahead to the future supply of uranium.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

It sounded like the perfect answer. Carbon trading could halt global warming, boost 'green' investment in the developing world and make money for city traders. Four years on and Europe's complex system to cut emissions from our factories has comprehensively failed. Despite vast amounts of money and effort being thrown at the scheme the current phase of carbon trading has, according to one report, cut emissions by a third of one per cent. In 'Costing the Earth' Tom Heap asks if capitalism's big idea has a future or just a murky past.

Back in the 1990s, in a desperate attempt to get the United States to sign up to binding reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases the concept of carbon trading was developed. The idea was that polluting industries would be forced to buy the right to pollute in the form of carbon credits. If they wanted to pollute more they'd have to pay. If they polluted less then they could make a profit by offering their surplus credits to other businesses. Over time the number of credits would be reduced, bringing worldwide carbon emissions tumbling in a relatively pain-free way.

The truth, as Tom discovers, is very different. The US has refused to take part, Japan and Korea have shelved plans to join in and the issue splits the Australian government. Only in the European Union has a system been developed and even here corruption, theft and a vast surplus of credits have combined to damage the policy's reputation and blunt its effectiveness.

Despite doubts about the system it's influence is spreading fast. Many businesses are using a system of voluntary carbon off-setting to ease the conscience of their customers. Buy a flight or a 4 x 4 and you'll often be asked to pay a little extra to fund carbon-reduction schemes in the developing world. Closer to home the idea of habitat banking is gaining ground. This could give developers the chance to build on a wildlife-rich area as long as they pay to create the equivalent habitat elsewhere. It's a concept that's popular within the coalition government and supporters expect it to become a major part of conservation policy in England within the decade.

Should we worry about this commodification of our environment or embrace the arrival of money and markets into the campaign to save our planet and improve the green space on our doorstep?

One of the most controversial clothing trends in Britain is the fashion revival of fur. In this week's 'Costing the Earth' Tom Heap investigates the claims by the British Fur Trade Association that fur is natural, renewable and a sustainable resource that's kind to the environment .He visits a fur a farm in Copenhagen where farmer Knud takes Tom around his farm that can house up to 24,000 mink. Tom sees for himself the conditions in which the animals are kept, how they're killed and how their pelts are used.

But how does Knud, and the wider industry, respond to recordings of animal cruelty and neglect from other European fur farms? And what about charities like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) who back in the 1990s ran a very successful campaign that vilified the wearing of fur? What do they make of the 'green' credentials of fur and its come back in the fashion world.

Producer: Perminder Khatkar.

90% of the world's coral is under threat, but could this frontline ecosystem also offer signs of hope?

Ocean acidification is one of the biggest threats to coral but in Egypt tourism also contributes. Much of the coastal resorts waste is pumped directly into the sea and plastic bags litter the sea bed. Step forward eco divers. Volunteers who clean up reefs on their holidays and not just in the Red Sea. Neptunes Army of Rubbish Cleaners dive in Wales to keep the Pembrokeshire marine environment free from litter but can this army of volunteers across the planet really make a difference.

As well as litter coral has also been found to be threatened by noise pollution. Young coral find their way home by listening to the noise of animals on the reef and increasing marine noise threatens their ability to do so.

Climate change is also a factor in ocean acidification but it may not be all bad news. A recent report in Australia suggests that ancient coral which drowned could return to life with warming seas. Further research at the University of Essex suggests that often coral bleaching does not always equate to coral death.

More promising still is research at the University of Exeter where scientists have discovered that some coral in the Arabic Sea, where waters have warmed most quickly so far, has been able to adapt to rising temperatures.

What these fragile structures need most is time and space to recover. Marine conservation zones have worked well on the Great Barrier Reef and in the UK's own territorial waters of Chagos but closer to home in Barra the pressures of conservation versus fishermen's livelihood have become all too apparent.

According to senior military figures, by the time a gallon of fuel reaches the frontline in Afghanistan its cost has increased to £250. Add in the cost of escorting those tankers in terms of lives and you have a pretty powerful incentive for the military to cut down its fuel consumption. Top officials in the United States and in the UK are taking this message seriously, investing in research into alternative fuels, portable battlefield power systems and energy reduction strategies.

There's already a company of US Marines operating in Afghanistan with solar powered communications systems whilst back home military chemists are working on fuels from algae. Their ultimate aim is for frontline military bases to produce their own vehicle fuel from on-site tanks of algae, completely eliminating the need for long convoys of fuel tankers. One British company is building enormous fuel-efficient airships that will spend weeks in the air patrolling Afghanistan whilst another builds generators that turn frontline waste into power for military camps.

Could all this military effort be just the tonic that civilian green technology needs? Could the military's cash, expertise and sense of urgency push forward the stagnant technology of solar, wind and alternative fuels? Tom Heap investigates the real eco-warriors in this week's 'Costing the Earth'.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

The Staffordshire and Frome Hoards are just two of the most exciting archaeological finds in recent years. Both were found by amateur treasure hunters in the UK using metal detectors. A good news story in these tough times but what is the real affect of legions of unqualified diggers on Britain's heritage and landscape?

The growing popularity of metal detectors has meant big finds in the past few years but a new detector has been produced which triples the depth at which small objects can be detected. So far detecting has been tolerated in Britain on the basis that it only digs up land to plough depth and therefore doesn't exacerbate disturbance of historically significant sites.

This new development adds fuel to what is already a heated debate. Archaeologists feel that treasure hunters take valuable finds from sites which should be excavated properly, archaeology is all about context they argue and once artefacts are removed our heritage is lost. The Countryside Alliance is warning landowners not to allow metal detectors on their land in order to avoid disputes but many detectors have signed up to a voluntary code designed to minimise their impact on farmland.

The detectors argues that without their valuable help today's agrochemicals will destroy a base metal object within a few years of it being in the ground. Coins have been destroyed in the last 50 years which have been in the ground for millennia. Stone implements are also broken with today's modern mechanical ploughs.

There are 30,000 metal detectorists today. They started detecting landmines after the war but will they continue to offer a service to the landscape and its heritage or simply take what it has to offer.

The melting of the Arctic is sparking a goldrush, bringing energy and mineral companies north in search of oil, gas and minerals. To the people of the north it's a confusing time. New business and industry can offer jobs and money but they threaten the pristine environment and seem certain to further dilute the native culture.

In this second programme on the future of the melting north Tom Heap visits Arctic Canada to find out more about the impact of development on flora, fauna and the native people.

He hears how the Inuit have taken up semi-western lifestyles only in the last fifty years. They were persuaded by the Canadian government to leave behind a life of small family groups following the seasonal movements of caribou, seal and whale in return for subsidised lives in new settlements scattered across the north. Their children were taken away from their parents to residential schools hundreds of miles away. The separation and inevitable abuse destroyed families and turned a proud, independent culture into one of dependence. Communities are still dealing with the fall-out, suffering the worst rates of suicide, alcoholism, violence and premature death in Canada.

In recent years the Inuit have gradually come to take more control over their own destiny. Today they have the power to say 'yes' or 'no' to miners and oil prospectors. A new generation of native leaders is determined that any money to be made from the natural resources will go toward turning around their communities.

Tom Heap meets local people to find out how they want development to proceed and hears from politicians and academics how the native people fit into the international picture. Will the Inuit really have a voice when the US, Russia and Canada begin squabbling over the region's resources?

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

In 2010 the Canadian Arctic experienced its warmest year on record. Suddenly the area's resources- oil, gas, iron ore, uranium, even diamonds- seem accessible. From Siberia through Greenland to Canada and Alaska energy and mining companies are descending on the north, eager for a slice of the profits they believe to be waiting for them in the gathering slush.

In the first of two programmes Tom Heap is in Arctic Canada to find out more about the new goldrush and to ask if the scramble for resources could reignite the great Cold War rivalries.

The Arctic has held a fascination for Europeans for centuries. Vikings, fishermen and whalers plundered for short summer seasons and in 1576 Sir Martin Frobisher sailed around Baffin Island in search of the North-West passage to the riches of the east, a search that would obsess sailors for the next 350 years.

Today the passage is clearing and shipping lines are examining the possibility of a high speed route between Western Europe and China. The clearing of the ice is also making oil exploration easier and allowing mining companies to access the mineral wealth of the north.

That wealth is also attracting the attention of the national governments that claim a share of the Arctic. It's three years since the explorer, Artur Chilingarov piloted his submarine to the seabed beneath the North Pole, planted a flag and claimed it for Russia. The diplomatic repercussions of that dramatic act are still being felt around the Arctic today.

Does that make economic, diplomatic or even military conflict inevitable or can the Arctic states share out the spoils without further damaging one of the most fragile environments on earth?

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

On October 31st we'll all dutifully turn our clocks back by one hour, plunging our evenings into premature darkness. There's mounting evidence that this annual ritual has a real environmental cost. Alice Roberts takes a look at the arguments from the Greenwich Meridian to Cornwall and the Western Isles to find out who could benefit and who might suffer from a change in the way we set our clocks.

Wine drinkers face an uncertain future. A decade of great vintages, plentiful supplies and cheap prices could be about to come to a shuddering halt.

In the classic wine regions of Europe there are huge concerns over climate change and land use. Burgundy's greatness is based upon the relatively low temperatures that allow its chardonnay and pinot noir grapes to ripen slowly. Gradually rising temperatures in the region are ripening the grapes more quickly, increasing sugar and therefore alcohol levels. The subtle flavours are threatened and, given the strict geographical rules of the French system, the very existence of Burgundy wine could be under threat.

Meanwhile, in Germany's Mosel Valley construction has already started on a motorway and spectacularly ugly bridge that will cut across the vineyards. Local winemakers fear that the delicate geology of the region will be shattered forever, altering the conditions that create the world's finest riesling.

The New World doesn't escape the environmental problems facing the industry. In Australia decades of over-abstraction and drought have denuded vital water supplies whilst climate change could make many of the wine-making regions inhospitable to all but the hardiest grapes.

Tom Heap considers the threats to the world's wine and asks what can be done to protect our best vineyards from environmental change.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.

Climate change has already claimed its first victims. Displaced people from the Carteret Islands, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya and the Niger delta have already become climate refugees but from whom can they seek refuge or even compensation?

Environmental Justice Foundation is calling for legally binding agreements to protect those displaced and there are various legal cases in action that could set a precedent for compensation.

400 Alaskan residents are suing energy companies for creating a public nuisance and for conspiracy (in funding research to 'prove' there is no link between climate change and human activity). Tuvalu, the low lying nation in the pacific, has threatened to sue Australia and the United States for their contributions to climate change and in the latest and most high profile case Katrina victims are taking the big oil companies BP, Shell, Chevron Exxonmobile, to court.

So far displaced people have not been defined as refugees so they have no legal rights but countries could be expected to take a number of migrants equivalent to their contribution or compensate victims for their loss.

Myles Allan of Oxford University has set up models to predict how much climate change attributable to man has caused extreme weather conditions like the flooding here in the UK in 2000. Sophisticated modelling could make it easier to attribute blame and a recent ruling in the European Court means that victims of environmental crime should find it a lot easier to take their cases to court. Big insurance companies are already warning their clients to expect compensation suits but there is still some way to go before precedent has been set in the case of climate change and nobody knows what will happen once these floodgates have opened.

Tom Heap talks to victims of Katrina who are already taking lawsuits and flood victims in the UK on the anniversary of the 2000 flooding to find out whether the courts can really offer compensation where international governments have failed to act.

What's happening in the Gulf of Mexico is quite literally a drop in the ocean compared to the growing plastic pollution further out in the Pacific and now found closer to home in the North Atlantic. Thirteen years after the world woke up to the threat from plastic polluting our seas and CTE's award-winning expose of the potential threat to our food, we reveal how far from winning the war on plastic pollution it's actually getting worse.

Along British beaches UFO's - unidentified floating objects are appearing in larger quantities than ever before. The Marine Conservation Society recently reported that the amount of plastic on our beaches has more than doubled in the last 15 years and more and more of it ends up inside or wrapped around our wildlife. Nobody knows what these oddly shaped bits of plastic are or where they have come from but there are increasingly urgent attempts to find out how much of it might be out there and what we can do to stop it.

The Pacific Gyre, a vortex of floating plastic already twice the size of France, is well documented but Gyres in the North and South Atlantic, The Indian Ocean and a further Pacific patch whilst long suspected have only just been discovered. Anna Cumming of the 5 Gyres Project discovered the North Atlantic Gyre in February and the Project is about to sail for the Southern Atlantic.

High profile campaigners like David de Rothschild, who sailed to the Pacific Gyre on a boat made of plastic bottles called The Plastiki, have told us about the sheer horror and size of the rubbish patch, now Costing the Earth looks at what can be done about it. The Plastiki boat has been made using a revolutionary new plastic which is completely recyclable, a new plant in Ireland plans to turn plastic waste into fuel and there is even a new plastic being made from algae.

The University of Sheffield are also researching the use of microbes to break down the plastics already in the sea. Prevention would be the key but with the gyres themselves only the tip of the problem and 70% of the plastic we allow into the sea sinking to the sea-bed a solution to disperse these giant rubbish islands is essential.

Tom Heap introduces Rare Earth, a programme exploring major stories about our environment.

Steve Backshall lives in a new build house which is very energy efficient and almost totally off-grid. However, achieving this has been extremely time consuming, expensive and pretty stressful. For this episode of Costing the Earth, Steve explores why -- when the cost of heating our homes is so high and we’re being encouraged to reduce our carbon footprint -- it’s so difficult and pricey to make where we live more energy efficient and access renewable sources of power. Steve describes exactly what he’s done to his house including triple glazing, batteries for electric power and even a bore-hole for water. He then hears about a research facility at the University of Salford where two new builds and a Victorian end-terrace have been constructed in temperature controlled chambers. There they test the efficacy of various energy saving and renewable technologies on the kinds of homes that most of us live in. Back in studio, Steve speaks to the Energy Saving Trust about the cost for householders of putting some of these measures in place and what grants are available. He also hears from the Sustainable Energy Association, a trade membership body, about what they believe should be done to make all of this more accessible and affordable.

Producer: Karen Gregor

It's said that a teaspoon of soil contains more life than all of the humans on earth. Microscopic life that is - bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematode worms and microarthropods like springtails and mites, but there's increasing evidence that this invisible world, the earth's microbiome, is under threat. Author, biologist and presenter Gillian Burke is fascinated by soil and has fond memories of playing with the ochre-red soils of Kenya. Gillian digs into the science of soil to ask how to get more people to understand and care about this the trillions of organisms that exist beneath our feet in the same way that we do about the malnourished polar bear on an ice-cap or the endangered mountain gorilla, and what are the consequences of doing nothing?

Contributors: Dr Colin Averill, senior scientist at ETH Zurich and co-founder of 'Funga' Chris Jones, Woodland Valley Farm Charles Nicholls, The Carbon Community Dr Elaine Ingham, Soil Food Web Dr Elze Hesse, The University of Exeter

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Toby Field

Climate resilient gardens are a feature of this month's Chelsea Flower Show, but how can the experts help the typical British gardener prepare for the future? To find out, botanist James Wong asks whether the way we garden could protect us against the effects of climate change, and if we can protect our gardens against more unpredictable weather patterns?

James joins Chelsea designer Tom Massey as he chooses plants for a mould breaking show garden. He learns tips for dealing with more unpredictable conditions at the Royal Horticultural Society's flagship Wisley garden, and from climate savvy gardener Kim Stoddart in West Wales. In the heart of London, amid the brutalist concrete of the Barbican centre, James meets Professor Nigel Dunnett, and considers how plants could make human habitats more liveable during heatwaves and heavy rain.

Producer: Sarah Swadling

Many of us can remember returning our pop bottles to the shop in return for cash and wonder why we can’t use a system like this today to reduce, reuse and recycle. In Scotland a Deposit Return Scheme has been on trial, but in a complex material world it’s not as simple as the schemes we might remember.

Tom Heap and Sepi Golzari-Munro turn detective to find out why the DRS (Deposit Return Scheme) is under threat and if it can survive to launch as intended. The scheme is causing issues for small businesses like craft brewers, it's angering politicians who are concerned about the added cost to consumers and it's being questioned by some waste management experts who believe the gains in recycling rates may be small in comparison to the huge costs of implementation.

Defenders argue that we need to take action and that change is never popular but that similar schemes in Europe have achieved over 90% recycling rates.

There are no simple answers with this one so it’s going to take some hard line detective work by our Costing the Earth crack team. Tom and Sepi step up to uncover the truth and consider the best future for bottle recycling.

Producer : Helen Lennard

Sewage is now discharged into our rivers and seas on a regular basis. It's joined by agricultural pollution and a host of microplastics. In this special debate programme, Tom Heap asks what's gone wrong with our water system. How did we get into this situation, what will it cost to put it right, and how can we go about sorting out the mess we seem to be in? Tom is joined by a panel of experts to discuss the history, the finances and the future of cleaning up our waterways.

Producer: Emma Campbell

When castles collapse into the sea or ancient burial places succumb to floodwaters we lose a slice of our shared culture. Qasa Alom reports from the Norfolk coast on the threats to our heritage and asks if we all need to prepare for the emotional impact of climate change.

Researchers from around the world are taking a global look at personal and community responses to climate change, and they're finding that we react in much the same way whether our homes are falling from crumbling Norfolk cliffs, our shrines are swallowed by Bangladeshi floods or the road to market is blocked by expanding Sahara sands.

Archaeologists from the University of East Anglia and Museum of London Archaeology discuss the emotional impact of losses already suffered and offer lessons from historic changes in climate, whilst researchers from the University of Ghana explain the cultural price being paid on the crumbling coastline of West Africa.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Costing the Earth - The Power of Nature Writing

After a winter of spiralling energy prices, Tom Heap asks whether our attitudes to energy consumption have changed. What lessons have we learned in the last twelve months, both as individual consumers and as a society - or are we putting our heads in the sand and carrying on as normal? Last week the government announced its plans to update the UK’s net zero strategy, but what do its announcements tell us about its priorities when it comes to our energy use? Fuel poverty is hitting many people hard, but some environmentalists argue that the invasion of Ukraine and everything which has followed could prove to be a turning point for environmental change. In this programme Tom hosts a panel discussion on how the energy landscape is changing.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Waves crashing on the shore, footsteps crunching on the forest floor. Stress levels plummet when we immerse ourselves in nature. Nick Luscombe meets the Japanese scientists working to bring the healing power of nature into the heart of the city. Nature's secret, they believe, isn't the sound you can hear, it's the high frequencies you can't hear. Only in our interactions with natural materials are these particular frequencies produced, frequencies that have a direct effect on our bodies.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

UK commitments to phase out gas boilers and petrol cars may be good news for the environment, but do we have the skill to realise our ambitions? Where are all the trained workers able to fit heat pumps in our homes and electric car chargers along our roads? In this programme, Tom Heap joins trainees as they learn the skills they'll need in a greener economy, and asks how we will staff up the next industrial revolution.

Presented by Tom Heap and produced by Emma Campbell.

New technologies are vital in the drive to turn our fossil fuel-based economies green and drastically slash carbon emissions. That technology requires investment and an enormous slice of the cash required is controlled by the financial markets of the City of London. Tom Heap meets the City's movers and shakers to find out if they- and the wider financial services industry- are willing and able to finance the revolution.

Producer: Reuben Smith-Burrell

Where do the prawns in your takeaway curry or pad thai come from? Peter Hadfield travels to South-East Asia to investigate the environmental impact of prawn farming.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

As sea levels rise, tough decisions are going to have to be taken about the flood defences of coastal Britain. How realistic will it be to continue to maintain them in future? In this programme, Qasa Alom asks whether we are facing up to this yet, and visits two places where the effects are already being felt. At Cwm Ivy on the Gower peninsula in South Wales, he visits a nature reserve where the decision has already been made to let the sea take back land which was originally claimed from it centuries ago. He walks along the sea wall which once kept the waves at bay, but which is now being left to gradually crumble away. The result is a landscape very different from the pasture and rough grazing which was here a few years ago. It's now being transformed into saltmarsh - a rarer and more valuable environmental habitat. It was a move which took careful consideration even for a nature reserve, but it's a much harder and more complicated decision when people's homes are involved. Qasa also visits the coastal village of Fairbourne in North Wales, which was earmarked for "decommissioning" almost a decade ago. He finds out what this could mean, asks whether it will really happen, and learns what the uncertainty of being labelled "the UK's first climate change refugees" has meant for the village's residents.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Months of governmental chaos have seen contradictory policies on the environment come and go. Tom Heap asks where the Conservative Party now stands on the environment.

Should we expect more onshore wind or a continuing ban, will farmers be paid to help wildlife? And what are the underlying trends in the Conservative Party? Are most activists and MPs signed up to a Green Growth agenda or are climate change sceptics and fossil-fuel fans still a powerful force in the party that has governed the UK for most of the post-war era?

Producer: Sarah Swadling

Community energy might conjure up images of off-grid villagers working together to put up solar panels on a remote community hall. This is one model, but Tom Heap finds that there are now many more ways to join the clean energy revolution.

From urban solar rooftop projects which train up young people as fitters to huge wind farms owned by a growing online army of committed enthusiasts, community energy is having a moment.

It seems an incredible but simple idea. If we all own a bit of our energy system then we can decide the price that we pay to keep warm and keep the lights on. So what is standing in the way of more community energy? Tom Heap discovers more about how all of us could get involved with the future of energy.

Producer: Helen Lennard

Since becoming pregnant, environmental historian and broadcaster Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has aspired to bring up her two children as sustainably as possible. In 2017, a Canadian study recommended that people could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the number of children they have by one. It also pointed out how much bigger the carbon footprint of a child is in the West, compared to a child brought up in Malawi.

Despite Eleanor's best efforts, she has found that raising 'eco babies' is not all that simple. From clothes and toys, to food, nappies and transport – parenting brings with it a whole pram-load of unexpected environmental impacts. And regardless of good intentions, parental pressures like a lack of support, the need for convenience and the price of eco-alternatives often means people fall back on more carbon-intensive options. So what needs to change to make it easier? Being a new parent is tough enough, without the feeling of failing the planet being added to the burden.

In this programme, Eleanor sits down with her good friend Pamela Welsh, who also became a mother during the Covid pandemic, to discuss the areas where they are 'winning', and the occasions where they have been unable to make the greener-method work. They think about solutions and remind us that it is ok not to get it right all the time.

Eleanor also meets individuals who are are attempting to come up with solutions to some of those difficulties - from mending clothes, recycling nappies, opening up cycling to parents with more than one child and renovating schools. Can the future of parenting be more eco?

Presented by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough Produced in Bristol by Natalie Donovan

The COP 27 summit in Sharm-El-Sheikh is welcoming world leaders and climate negotiators to Egypt. In a year that has been rocked by the war in Ukraine and global economic instability, can COP refocus the world’s attention on climate?

Tom Heap and Matt McGrath will take a look back at some of the pledges made last November in Glasgow for COP 26 to find out whether countries across the world are keeping to the agreements made on areas such as deforestation, methane reduction, finance and technology.

Everyone agrees that current geopolitics will make significant global agreements to decrease emissions difficult but there may be signs of hope in the actions of individual countries. Tom and Matt will try to decipher where we are and what we might be able to expect from this years ‘Conference of the Parties’.

To help them pick through the details our panel of experts include Bernice Lee from Chatham House, Danny Kennedy from New Energy Nexus, Mia Moisio from Climate Action Tracker, Piers Forster from the University of Leeds and Ben Caldecott from the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group.

Producer: Helen Lennard

Anna Turns investigates what over 30 years of post mortems on dolphins, porpoises, and whales has revealed about the state of the seas. The Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme in England and Wales, and the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme, have carried out thousands of autopsies. Anna goes into the pathology lab with Rob Deaville from ZSL as he examines a Harbour Porpoise for clues about how it died, and how it lived. As Anna finds out from toxicologist Dr Rosie Williams and veterinary pathologist Dr Andrew Brownlow, evidence from post mortems shows animals' ability to survive and breed is threatened by pollution from long banned but peristent chemicals, known as PCBs. To find out how these chemicals could still be leaching into the environment Anna travels to the Thames Estuary with Professor of Environmental Geochemistry Kate Spencer.

Producer for BBC Audio in Bristol : Sarah Swaddling

The world's glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. 2022 has been a particularly disastrous year in the Swiss Alps, where new figures show that glaciers have lost 6% of their total volume of ice during this summer's heatwave. Three glacier-measuring stations have had to close this year, as there simply isn't enough ice left to measure.

In this programme, Jheni Osman travels to the Alps to see for herself how much the glaciers are retreating. She meets up with Swiss archaeologists, trying desperately to save ancient artefacts which are now emerging from the melting ice, after thousands of years frozen in time. She talks to a mountain leader, who explains that routes used by generations of hikers and mountaineers are now closing, as melting ice makes more and more of them too dangerous to walk on.

Jheni asks the head of Switzerland's glacier monitoring team whether anything can be done to save the remaining ice from eventual destruction. She also talks to a cartographer at University College London, who shows her how maps are having to be re-drawn, and even international borders re-considered, to take into account our vanishing glaciers.

Produced by Emma Campbell

Life can be pretty tough for the pangolin. This scaly-skinned ant-eater is the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world. Followers of some branches of Chinese medicine believe pangolin parts can cure anything from blood clots to cancer and they're willing to pay big money for poached animals.

As a boy growing up in rural Vietnam Thai Van Nguyen watched his neighbours capture and kill a mother and baby pangolin. His disgust inspired an intense urge to help the pangolin and the threatened habitats in which it lives. Founding an independent conservation organisation in Communist Vietnam isn't easy, nor is facing down heavily armed poaching gangs engaged in the trade with China. Despite the challenges Thai has set up the country's first effective anti-poaching unit, disrupting the trade and catching hundreds of smugglers red-handed.

Peter Hadfield travels to Vietnam to see Thai and his team in action and gauge the impact of his work on local communities and the country's attitudes to its native wildlife.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Photo courtesy of Suzy Eszterhas

Early humans adapted and survived in the face of a changing climate. Eleanor Rosamund-Barraclough joins an archaeological dig in Malta to learn the lessons for our own time.

A team led by Dr Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is making remarkable discoveries about waves of human and animal habitation of the Mediterranean islands, but what can the fate of giant dormice, pygmy elephants and the hunters who may have relied on them for survival tell us about contemporary island life in a dangerous period of rising sea levels and searing summers?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

For many dog owners, watching your pet race around after a crow or leap joyfully into a stream is a source of great pleasure...but these natural behaviours all have an impact on the environment. Estimates of the UK dog population vary from 10 million all the way up to 13 million and the number has been rising in recent years, so their environmental paw print is growing.

In this programme Tom Heap visits a nature reserve where dogs have been banned from some areas after being blamed for frightening wildlife, damaging rare habitats and adding excess nutrients to the soil via their excrement. He meets a farmer and dung beetle expert, who shows him how the drugs found in flea treatments and worming pills can leach out into nature. And what to do with all that poo - especially when it's wrapped in plastic bags?

Meanwhile, across the world free-roaming dogs are having wide reaching effects. Dr Abi Vanak from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment says the 60-80 million free-roaming dogs in India are putting some native species at risk of extinction.

Producer: Heather Simons

In the UK, more than half our electricity is generated without using fossil fuels. Despite that, the rocketing price of gas has lead to matching increases in our electricity bills. Why the disconnect? What could we be doing differently so that consumers benefit from cheap renewable power? And what will the current crisis mean for our long term aims of reducing our use of fossil fuels?

In this programme, Tom Heap asks an expert panel how our energy market can be reshaped to produce smaller bills in a low carbon future.

He's joined by: Glenn Rickson - Head of European Power Analysts with S&P Global Commodity Insights Emma Pinchbeck - CEO of Energy UK, the trade body for the British energy industry Michael Grubb - Professor of Energy and Climate Change at UCL

Producer: Heather Simons

Running 12500km from the Arctic Circle to the borders of Greece, the European Greenbelt is one of the most ambitious conservation schemes ever devised. The idea was to use the no man's land of the Iron Curtain that divided Communist East from Capitalist West as a wildlife corridor to allow rare and endangered species to travel unimpeded across the continent.

On the 20th anniversary of the Greenbelt, the writer and anthropologist, Mary-Ann Ochota takes to the road, from the industrialised peat bogs of Finland through the Baltic states and Germany's dying forests to the peasant farms of the southern Balkans. The wildlife of these borderlands is rich and varied but the conservationists feel that they're battling forces bigger than those that created the Iron Curtain in the first place.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Nature and wildlife tourism has surged in recent years. Millions of us seem to want to want to follow in the footsteps of David Attenborough; meeting mountain gorillas, ticking off Africa’s big five mammals or hitting the waves to meet whales and dolphins. But is wildlife tourism good or bad for the world’s most sensitive environments?

The Covid-19 outbreak gave us a sudden, unexpected opportunity to answer that question. Some of the most magnetic natural places on the planet lost their international tourists for two years. Naturalist and broadcaster, Mike Dilger has been to the cloud forests of Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands to gauge the impact. Both of these extraordinary environments depend on tourism to pay for their protection, but should they continue to rely on travellers emitting vast quantities of carbon dioxide to get their fix of hummingbirds and marine iguanas?

Mike is joined in the studio by Fiore Longo of Survival International, travel writer Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent and Vicky Smith from the eco-travel website, Earthchangers.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Steve Backshall explores whether slowing down and quietening noisy shipping could help protect Canada’s whale population.

A busy shipping lane between Vancouver Island and the Canadian mainland – known as the Inside Passage - is home to a community of Orcas. These are the unmistakable, sleek and distinctive, black and white members of the dolphin family otherwise known as Killer Whales. They’re smart and social and have a sophisticated language of clicks and whistles which helps them hunt and communicate within their family pods.

Paul Spong runs OrcaLab which, for over 50 years, has carried out research into these whales. He and his partner, Helena Symonds, have long suspected that noisy boats impact whales. Their experience of listening to these Orcas and monitoring their behaviour has shown that some family groups, associated with these waters, have left. Others only appear at the end of the cruise-liner season. There are hydrophone recordings which illustrate how propeller noise forces the orcas to ‘shout’ or stop communicating altogether which impacts family-pod relationships and hunting.

Broadening the research is Janie Wray of BC Whales. While Paul and Helena concentrate on Orcas, BC Whales also research Fins and Humpbacks. Janie's team has recently increased the string of hydrophones which now stretches along the entire coast of British Columbia. This development coincided with the pandemic when the oceans became a little quieter: for a while the cruise liners and whale-watching boats disappeared. This phase could provide a breakthrough - if the recordings made during these quieter months can prove that the whales benefitted from the peace, can boats be persuaded to slow down or even change route?

Another vital member of the research team is Dr. Ben Hendricks, he’s a software designer who has written a programme that can analyse vast amounts of recorded whale song very quickly, meaning humans no longer need to listen to everything in real time. All these different threads of research, when pulled together, could be enough to gather the evidence needed to further protect Canada’s resident and transient whale populations.

Also taking part in the programme is Erin Gless of the Pacific Whale Watch Association. She says whale watching vessels have made improvements to ensure they view wildlife in a non-invasive way.

The programme image is of Steve kayaking alongside an Orca.

Presenter: Steve Backshall Producer for BBC Audio in Bristol: Karen Gregor

It's said that the environment is the silent victim of war. In this programme, Tom Heap finds out how the conflict in Ukraine is affecting environmental work in the country. With so many people forced to flee, what happens to projects which were trying to protect fragile wildlife habitats? He talks to an award-winning Ukrainian environmentalist who has had to temporarily abandon his conservation project around Chernobyl in order to help with the humanitarian aid effort. Meanwhile, with airstrikes taking place in some of the most industrialised areas in the east of the country, the risk of long-term contamination from damaged coal mines and nuclear installations is very real. Tom asks what lessons can be learned from previous wars around the world, and discovers how long-lasting the environmental impacts of military action can be. How can environmental concerns be can be given a voice, instead of remaining the silent victim, at a time when the focus is understandably on saving human lives?

Produced by Emma Campbell

Two of the biggest sports events of the year, the Commonwealth games in Birmingham and the FIFA world cup in Qatar have pledged to be the most sustainable and green sporting events to date. Both have made bold statements 'the first sustainable commonwealth games' and the ‘first carbon-neutral FIFA World Cup'. Qasa Alom finds out if they can really deliver and just how sustainable and green these global sports events will be. Starting off with his home city of Birmingham Qasa discovers some of the changes taking place, from stadium infrastructure to transport and offsetting. Will these commonwealth games be the first games with a carbon neutral legacy and set a benchmark for future games?

The sporting world is starting to rise to the challenge, and it must, already major International tournaments are being adversely affected by a warming climate. At the FIFA World Cup in Qatar teams will be playing in artificially cooled stadiums with games held, controversially, in the cooler month of November and December. Qasa finds out if future world class sports events will require radical solutions in a changing climate, and what sporting events can do to curb their own emissions.

Producers for BBC Audio in Bristol: Perminder Khatkar and Helen Lennard

Making your finances work harder against climate change. Tom Heap speaks to Richard Curtis, British film director and architect of Comic Relief, about his Make My Money Matter campaign. This encourages everyone to find out where their pension money goes. He also speaks to the boss of a UK bank, Bevis Watts, and to the campaign director of switchit.green about how easy it is to move your bank account elsewhere. A special episode for anyone worried about what their money is - or isn't - doing to keep the planet green.

Interviewees: Lisa Stanley of Good With Money Bevis Watts of Triodos John Fleetwood of Square Mile Investment Consulting and Research Sophie Cowen of switchit.green Richard Curtis of Make My Money Matter

The presenter is Tom Heap and the producer in Bristol is Miles Warde

Green industry is heading to Scandinavia's far north. Fossil fuel-free steel and clean, green wind energy are in great demand but what does this rapid development mean for the indigenous people of the region? Richard Orange reports from Sweden.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Millions of trees were brought down by this winter's storms. Storm Arwen in November proved particularly damaging, taking out whole swathes of woodland in Scotland and the north of England. It comes at a time when there is more focus than ever on planting trees, with the urgent need to both tackle climate change and produce more home-grown timber. At the moment, the UK imports more than 80% of the timber it uses.

In this programme, Tom Heap visits two forest estates in the North East of Scotland, to see for himself what havoc the high winds have wrought. One estate manager tells him that they'll be clearing up for the next three years, with an estimated 45,000 tonnes of timber now lying broken on the ground. Tom finds out what this means for the work of foresters on the estate, and how it will affect the value of the timber they'll be able to sell. Meanwhile he discovers why the National Trust for Scotland is seeing the damage caused by Storm Arwen as an opportunity to re-think the kind of woodland it has on its land.

Tom talks to the Royal Forestry Society at their research site in the Chilterns, and finds out what techniques can be used to improve the resilience of woodlands to future storms. He asks whether - when the clear-up is over and it's time to re-plant - we may need to explore using different species of trees, better able to survive in the climate we expect to have in another fifty years' time. He also meets a meteorologist from Reading University, who explains what changing weather patterns may mean for storms in the future.

Producer for BBC Audio in Bristol Emma Campbell

The government announced its new energy strategy last week, outlining plans to tackle energy supply over the coming decades. In this edition of Costing the Earth, Tom Heap chairs a panel discussion which looks into the detail of the strategy, and asks what it will mean for both net zero targets and household bills. He is joined by a panel of experts: Roz Bulleid, Deputy Policy Director at the independent think tank Green Alliance; Chief Political Commentator at the i-newspaper, Paul Waugh; and environmental journalist, author and campaigner Mark Lynas.

Produced for BBC Audio Bristol by Emma Campbell

It's not easy fighting for nature in many of the former Soviet states. Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent reports from Tajikistan, on the trail of the snow leopard and the extraordinary people who protect them.

This high corner of Central Asia is home to the world's biggest species of wild sheep and goats, prey of arguably the most beautiful of the big cats- the extravagantly furred snow leopard. After the fall of the Soviet Union a vicious civil war killed 100,000 people and saw many more displaced and starving. Kalashnikovs and hungry people are never good news for wildlife and, sure enough, the wildlife of the mountains was decimated.

In the last few years local conservationists have taken it on themselves to declare reserves and persuade their neighbours to reduce their hunting. With minimal funding from the government and international agencies these conservationists have had to find their own ways to pay for the protection of the reserves. Most of the money to employ rangers has come from selling licences to hunt small numbers of Marco Polo sheep, Ibex and Markhor wild goats. It's a controversial approach but, in sheer numbers of endangered species, it seems to be working. Can the improvements continue as climate change brings ever harsher winters and drier summers and regional instability keeps the wildlife tourists away?

Antonia meets the conservationists trying their best to protect their wildlife in the face of enormous odds.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

The pandemic has changed the way we work and shop meaning a growing number of offices and retail outlets are empty. So, what do we do with them? Knock them down and start again or find a sustainable way to reuse them? The buzz word is ‘retrofit’: redesigning and refurbishing an existing building. Elsie Owusu is an architect and, in this episode of Costing the Earth, she explores this current and contentious issue. It’s usually cheaper to build new, so what can be done to encourage developers and architects to change their plans.

She visits Selkirk House on Museum Street in London. Developers want to demolish this 1960s concrete tower-block and build something bigger in its place. Campaigners say that a vast amount of CO2 emissions would be saved it the building is retrofitted.

Architect, Peter Fisher, takes Elsie to a 1950s, concrete, former print-works which is being refurbished. Just five years ago Peter says the decision would have been made to demolish but, times are changing, and by choosing retrofit CO2 emissions will be reduced by 50%.

Smith Mordak takes a wider view of the debate, arguing that a cultural shift is needed across architecture and the associated disciplines. The automatic response to a design challenge of building new, or even building at all, should be rejected; there are more creative and greener ways of thinking to explore first.

Contributors: Simon Alford of the Royal Institute of British Architects; Howard Crawshaw of the Knight Property Group; Jim Monahan of Save Museum Street; Simon Sturgis of Targeting Zero; Peter Fisher of Bennetts Associates; Smith Mordak of Buro Happold.

Producer: Karen Gregor

In Northern Ireland peace and prosperity have long been prioritised over environmental protection. Tom Heap asks if a new generation can push nature and wildlife up the agenda.

For decades a blind eye was often turned to suspect developments in natural areas and breaches of pollution regulations. A more recent upsurge in large-scale dairy, pig and poultry farming has added to the burden on Northern Ireland's once green and pleasant land. New laws to fight climate change and a new subsidy regime for agriculture give Northern Irish politicians and regulators the chance to put things right. With the help of BBC Northern Ireland Environment Correspondent, Louise Cullen, Tom Heap considers the issues in advance of the Stormont Assembly elections.

Producer: Sarah Swadling

Energy prices have hit new heights. Gas and electricity bills will rocket for most people at the end of this month as the price cap is lifted and nobody filling their car could fail to notice record prices at the pumps. Energy too is at the heart of the biggest conflict in Europe for decades. Russia’s war machine is paid for with oil and gas and the West’s response is shaped by our reliance on that power source.

What does all this mean for the environment? Can we maintain focus on carbon emissions when Russian tanks are belching their way down Ukrainian streets? Or is it an opportunity to hasten our detox from fossil fuels as we see our addiction funding war?

Tom Heap discusses our energy future with James Murray of Business Green magazine, Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive of Energy UK and the expert on new energy finance, Michael Liebreich.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Landowners are being offered big money for land to absorb carbon dioxide emissions. What does it mean for British farming and the shape of the countryside? Tom Heap reports.

Producer: Sarah Swadling

Perfluoroalkyl substances - or PFAS - are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals which have been widely used in everything from frying pans to firefighting foam. Anything which is non-stick, water-resistant or stain-repellent is likely to have been produced using PFAS. In the USA they have been linked to mass poisoning of water supplies, as the Hollywood film 'Dark Waters' documented. In this programme, Leana Hosea sets out to discover whether they are having an impact here. She teams up with environmental journalist Rachel Salvidge to investigate. They take water samples from drinking water around the country and have them analysed for the presence of PFAS. In Jersey Leana meets residents who believe their ill health is down to contamination of their drinking water, and whose blood has been shown to contain PFAS. She hears what the links are with health concerns, and finds out why firefighters are an at-risk group.

Producer: Emma Campbell

On a hot summer's day the River Wharfe in Ilkley in West Yorkshire is a tempting place to swim. In 2020 it was designated as the first inland waterway to be safe for bathing. Just over a year later the water was found to be polluted by animal and human faeces and locals and tourists were advised to stay out of the river.

The River Wharfe certainly isn't unique, Britain's rivers are taking the brunt of rising populations, antiquated sewage treatment and intensive agriculture. Too much waste- human, animal and chemical- is entering our rivers, exposing swimmers and wildlife to infection. Extreme weather as experienced in February is only making matters worse.

Charlotte Smith and Caz Graham search for solutions to Britain's polluted rivers.

Producer: Hermeet Chadha

There have been big promises about tree-planting numbers over the last few years - but is there much point in planting more trees, if we're not looking after the ones we've already got? The Woodland Trust estimates that only 7% of the UK's native woodlands are in good ecological condition - with pests, diseases, climate change and development all threats to tree health. Meanwhile a report from Botanic Gardens Conservation International says that a third of the world's trees are at risk of extinction.

In this programme, Peter Gibbs finds out what's ailing our trees, and asks what can be done to nurse them back to health. He talks to scientists, campaigners and the government's Chief Plant Health Officer, and finds out about a project where researchers are on the hunt for trees with natural resistance to ash dieback, which may be able to re-populate the ash woodlands of the future. He also visits a 'research forest' in the Midlands, where scientists are piping extra carbon dioxide at some of their trees, to find out what the impact of rising CO2 levels is likely to be for trees in years to come.

Produced by Emma Campbell

The public wanted to name her Boaty McBoatface, but in the end she got a slightly more stately name. The UK's newest polar research vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, has just set out on her maiden voyage to Antarctica, where she'll enable scientists to research climate change and its impacts on the polar regions.

Following a hundred years of polar exploration, this ship will write the next chapter in UK polar science.

In this episode, ocean physicist Helen Czerski gets aboard to poke around the new ship, and meets the crew members and scientists who will be taking her to the ends of the earth in search of the answers to some of the most pressing questions of our time. She finds out how the ship has been designed specially to encourage collaboration and bring together scientists from different fields. And she tries out the bunks and learns what life at sea will be like.

Find out why krill can fight climate change, how you cook at sea in a storm and what the massive hole in the middle of the ship is for!

Producer: Heather Simons

Britain's rivers are in crisis, with only 14% of them deemed to be in a good ecological state. Chalk streams are particularly vulnerable, as so much is taken out of them for use in our water supplies. Pollution from sewage and agricultural run-off only add to the problem. In this programme Tom Heap takes a canoe trip along a waterway he knows well, the River Cam, to see for himself what's going on. He talks to environmental groups and local people, and asks whether the rapid expansion of homes and businesses in the area can sustainably continue in such a water-stressed region. He concludes that urgent action is needed if rivers like the Cam are not to run dry.

Producer: Emma Campbell

Golf courses do not have a good reputation when it comes to the environment. Keeping the greens and fairways looking immaculate usually means using pesticide, fungicide and fertiliser - as well as large amounts of water. Wildlife such as pecking birds and digging moles, which can damage the pristine playing surfaces, are seen as a nuisance. But attitudes are starting to change in the golfing world. In this programme, Sybil Ruscoe finds out about efforts which are being made to make golf more environmentally-friendly. She visits a golf course in Bedfordshire, where the greenkeeper puts up bird boxes and encourages areas of wildflowers. During her visit, she meets a conservation advisor from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, whose job focusses specifically on golf courses - part of a new partnership set up last year between the RSPB and the world of golf. She talks to the sport's governing body and the golf greenkeepers association, to ask whether the game is doing enough to change its ways. She also hears from a geographer who argues that the game of golf is fundamentally environmentally unacceptable in a time of climate emergency. It all leaves Sybil, a golfer herself, wondering 'how green is my golf course?'

Producer: Emma Campbell

We are all surrounded by synthetic chemicals in our everyday lives - from pesticide residues in food to chemicals used in the manufacture of household products - but most of us are not aware that they also make their way into our bodies. In this programme, environmental journalist Anna Turns investigates her own 'chemical body burden' - the amount of persistent, synthetic pollutants that have accumulated inside her system. A blood test shows her that traces of pesticides which were banned before she was even born can still be detected in her body. Analysis of the contents of her vacuum cleaner reveals that chemicals used to make furniture and electrical goods more fire-resistant are there too. Anna goes around her house, room by room, identifying the key sources of chemicals, and asking how they've travelled from the carpets and cleaning products into her own body. She talks to chemists and environmental scientists and asks what the threat to human health may be, and whether it matters that we now all carry around our own toxic cocktail.

Produced by Emma Campbell

World leaders have offered up a suite of promises at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow but how many of them will make a real dent in our greenhouse gas emissions? Tom Heap talks to experts in sustainable finance, methane emissions, deforestation, clean technology and energy to gauge the impact made so far. He's also joined by two veterans of many COP meetings, University of East Anglia climate scientist, Corinne Le Quéré and Bernice Lee of Chatham House. What do they make of the conference that the world is watching?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

As world leaders gather in Glasgow you can be certain of one thing - the loudest voices won't be coming from the people most impacted by climate change. Inuit hunters on melting ice and Pacific islanders losing their homelands to rising sea levels won't be flying Business Class to Glasgow - they won't have the chance to fight for their rights amongst the world powers and corporate interests. Tom Heap brings those voices to the banks of the Clyde for the first of two special editions of Costing the Earth from COP26.

He hears from the Adivasi people of India, marching to stop their land being taken for new coal mines and meets Yessie Mosby, a Torres Strait islander who believes the Australian government should do much more to prevent his islands disappear beneath the rising seas. In Glasgow he talks to Sarobidy Rakotonarivo about the tensions between conservation and livelihoods in the forests of Madagascar and hears how conflict and climate change are inextricably linked in the humanitarian crisis around Lake Chad.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Photo: Courtesy of Vijay Ramamurthy

Abandoned by its entire population in 1930, St Kilda has been uninhabited ever since. What's it like to spend six months with the birds on one of Britain's most isolated islands?

Conor McKinney is a naturalist and broadcaster with what might be- depending on your personality- either the best job in the world or the worst. St Kilda is seriously isolated- it’s an archipelago of islands over one hundred miles west of the Scottish mainland and 40 miles of rough Atlantic waves away from the nearest pub or shop. That isolation means that it has a unique environment. It’s packed with rare and endemic wildlife and the owners of the island- the National Trust for Scotland- want to keep it that way. The Ministry of Defence has a construction project on the main island of Hirta and it’s Conor's job to make sure that the boats and builders that will be coming and going don’t bring unwanted guests with them- things like sea squirts, Japanese knotweed or- worst of all- the rats that would very quickly decimate the extraordinary seabirds of St Kilda.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s Moonshot which united people around a goal to put man on the moon and spurred the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred around five simple but ambitious goals for our planet. Chhavi Sachdev announces the winners of the inaugural prize and discusses how smart ideas from individual innovators and small companies can influence the upcoming climate debate at COP26 in Glasgow. Prizes like this prove that there are clever ideas being developed to ease our pressure on the environment, but how can those ideas be harnessed and scaled up to make a big difference globally? Chhavi is joined by Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and by Juliet Davenport, founder of the green power company Good Energy, to discuss the best ways to make smart ideas part of the solution to the planet's biggest problems.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s Moonshot which united people around a goal to put man on the moon and spurred the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred around five simple but ambitious goals for our planet. Chhavi Sachdev profiles more of the prize nominees from all around the world.

This week Chhavi concentrates on the innovators working to reduce waste, provide clean water and develop clean energy solutions for communities without access to power. Japan is notoriously prone to natural disaster which makes it a perfect testing ground for disaster-management solutions. The Wota Box arose from the urgent need for clean water in locations hit by earthquakes or tsunamis. Using the latest techniques in artificial intelligence it controls a series of filters to remove pollutants and provide essential washing facilities where they're needed most. In Nigeria, Olugbenga Olubanjohas invented a portable battery which can be rented from a vending machine to power mobile phone chargers and laptops, bringing modern communication options to some of the poorest areas of Africa.

Producer: Julian Siddle

Taking inspiration from President Kennedy’s Moonshot which united people around a goal to put man on the moon and spurred the development of new technology in the 1960s, the Earthshot Prize is centred around five simple but ambitious goals for our planet. Over the next three editions of Costing the Earth, Chhavi Sachdev meets the prize nominees from all around the world.

This week Chhavi concentrates on the innovators working to protect nature on land and in the oceans and meets those striving to improve the air quality of our cities. Vinisha Umashankar, an Indian schoolgirl, reveals her solar powered ironing cart which cuts pollution in her neighbourhood and the Living Seawalls team show off their beautifully carved additions to Sydney Harbour- works of art which provide marine life with a place to hide, feed and breed on the previously sterile sea walls of the harbour.

Producer: Julian Siddle

Photo: Life returns to Sydney Harbour- courtesy of Leah Wood, Living Seawalls project

Qasa Alom has always been told that his family farm in Sylhet, Bangladesh is his heritage. His parents have spent their time and money trying to maintain the estate and his father has always hoped Qasa would take on some of the strain. Born in Britain, Qasa had other ideas about how he wanted to spend his time but he now faces a new challenge; how to protect his family’s roots from climate change.

Bangladesh’s low elevation and high population density make it one of the most vulnerable countries as climate change accelerates extreme weather conditions such as heat and floods and sea-levels rise. Qasa’s village has always faced flooding but the future looks more unpredictable. Now as Qasa considers his future commitment to the farm he finds a country that is battling extremes but also finding solutions.

Early weather warning systems which incorporate local knowledge and using community resolve to insure everyone gets to safety are one example. Changing crops, farming shellfish and growing jute to build up soil naturally are also being trialled and, most importantly, migration by climate refugees is being planned for. As a leader in climate adaptation Bangladesh is leading the world but will it be enough to keep Qasa committed to helping to maintain his family’s way of life here?

Naturalist and broadcaster Mike Dilger takes to the road to map the impact that global warming is having on Britain's plants and flowers. From the highest peaks of the Highlands to the lowest points of the East Anglian Brecklands our flowers are adapting to the changing seasons, but how many will survive and thrive into the future?

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Adrian has a big idea. His home of Braunton, a village in North Devon, has a problem with flooding. Over the last decade he has seen it get worse. The village flooded badly in 2012 just after a million pound flood defence scheme was completed, and there was more flooding in 2016. Braunton has since had those defences upgraded, but more work is needed further up the valley. Instead of more expensive schemes, Adrian has an alternative solution - bringing back beavers to do the work for them.

Beavers are nature’s engineers, their dams prevent flooding by holding water upstream and slowing the flow in rivers, while simultaneously creating new wetland habitats for species of insects, amphibians, birds, fish and plants to flourish in. These industrious rodents were hunted to extinction in Britain about 400 years ago, and are now beginning to make a comeback. A record number of beavers will be released by the Wildlife Trusts this year, but so far pretty much all licensed beaver reintroductions have been on individual private estates or within fenced enclosures.

What Adrian is proposing would be the first community-led reintroduction of beavers on a landscape scale, and if successful in gaining permission, the project could provide a model for others. Working together with the Beaver Trust, Adrian now has nearly 50 local landowners on board and the project is gaining momentum. However there are many obstacles to overcome, not least that not everyone is in favour of beavers flooding their land. We visit Braunton as it begins its beaver journey and hear what can be learnt about managing the species from the River Otter Beaver Trial in South Devon, and from Scotland where there is a wild population in Tayside causing problems for farming. Can we move beyond keeping beavers in enclosures and learn to live alongside them?

Presented by Lindsey Chapman and produced by Sophie Anton

Government action on climate change is sluggish. Could rich individuals cut through red tape and fund measures to cool the planet from their own pockets? And should they be allowed?

Presenter/producer: Jolyon Jenkins

How will Britain's power system need to change for a zero carbon world? Tom Heap investigates.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Australia's government is famous for its lack of interest in climate change. Despite increasing problems from bushfires and droughts, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Liberal-led coalition government continue to promote coal-mining and dodge efforts to reduce the country's carbon emissions. It's all the more extraordinary then that one Australian state, governed by Mr Morrison's party is streets ahead of most of the world in its conversion to renewable energy.

Peter Hadfield reports from Adelaide on the South Australian miracle.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

When a cargo ship blocked the Suez canal for nearly a week, the eyes of the media focussed on shipping. Hundreds of vessels were stuck as tailbacks built up at the entrance to what is one of the world's busiest trade routes. What effect does the sheer quantity of goods which we routinely move around the globe have on the environment? Are there ways of 'greening' shipping and lessening its environmental impact? In this programme, Lucy Siegle chairs a panel discussion which aims to find out.

Producer: Emma Campbell

The UK has dramatically reduced the amount of waste which goes into landfill over the last 25 years, but there are are still decades worth of rubbish underground, buried by generations gone by. Until the 1970s there were almost no rules about what could be put into landfill and very few records were kept before the 1980s, so no-one really knows what's lurking underground. The 1990s saw a change of attitude, with the EU landfill directive and the introduction in the UK of the landfill tax. But coastal erosion means that some our old landfill sites are now disgorging their contents, and leaking rubbish from half a century ago back into the environment. Tom Heap visits a site on the Thames estuary, and sees bin bags, old tyres, broken glass, corroded batteries and bits of asbestos spilling out onto the shore. With more than a thousand UK landfill sites now believed to be at risk from erosion or flooding, Tom learns that the ghosts of our old disposal habits are coming back to haunt us - and asks what can be done about it.

Producer: Emma Campbell

How well protected is Britain's coast and its wildlife after Brexit? Chef and fisheries campaigner, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall joins Peter Gibbs to examine the health of our seas.

Can our network of Marine Protected Areas be strengthened and expanded? What impact is climate change having on our waters? How can we lift the curse of plastic pollution from our beaches? Surfers, fishermen, campaigners and conservationists join Peter and Hugh to consider the issues.

Producer: Jonathan Wiltshire

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 pest that carries disease. But what are the risks and potential consequences of meddling with the complex processes of the natural world?

Jheni Osman talks to scientists currently researching potential uses of gene editing for environmental conservation, including combining it with a gene drive to control grey squirrel populations, using CRISPR to find the genes responsible for heat tolerance in coral, and editing genetic diversity into species on the brink of extinction. At this early stage of the development of the science, Jheni hears about the particular ethical and practical considerations of altering the genomes of wild species and releasing them into the wild. Should we use this power to edit nature, and if so, how should it be controlled?

Producer: Sophie Anton

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 outside the UK which put more responsibility on cat owners for what they hunt and gets practical advice about how cat owners might deter their pretty kitties from being savage predators, while still keeping it happy.

Presented by Miranda Krestovnikoff and produced by Anne-Marie Bullock for BBC Audio Bristol.

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-reaching carbon cuts by 2030: Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas, Chief Exec of the Green Finance Institute; Dr Stephen Cornelius, Chief advisor on Climate Change at WWF UK; and Dr Angela Wilkinson, CEO of the World Energy Council. Can we really halve emissions by 2030?

Producer: Sophie Anton

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 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

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 unbearably hot.

As more parts of the globe head towards temperature and humidity combinations that would make human life impossible without air conditioning, we are in danger of setting up systems that, should they fail, would have disastrous consequences.

Meanwhile, the more we get used to living in temperatures that rarely change much, the less well equipped are bodies are becoming to deal with big changes when they occur.

Luckily, there are techologies that could help solve some of the problem. It may not be necessary for us to cool and dehumidify the air around us in order to feel cool. Devices that suck radiant heat from us, like a cool sun, could keep us fresh at a fraction of the energy cost.

Producer: Jolyon Jenkins