Japan was the world’s largest importer of LNG for half a century. In the final episode of “All Gassed Up,” we travel to Asia to learn how the global gas industry is expanding — how the need for LNG continues to be sold. Right now, LNG is in its golden age – times are good, profits are high. And Japan’s big bet is that these good times will keep rolling. That more and more of the world will get hooked on LNG. And this whole global gas expansion hinges on the Gulf Coast. Come with us to...

Until the Ukraine War, Russia was Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas. After the invasion, political leaders wanted off Russian gas, and fast. So, they turned to the U.S. In part two, we follow American gas all the way to Germany — Europe’s biggest energy consumer, where the energy crisis hit hardest. US LNG provided a lifeline for Germany. But what happens when a country gets hooked? “All Gassed Up” is a special 3-part series from Sea Change. This special series is part of the Pulitzer...

Right now in the US, there is a GAS BOOM. A liquified natural gas boom — or LNG. The US produces the most LNG in the world. And the epicenter of this massive expansion? It’s here on the Gulf Coast. For the last year, we’ve traversed Louisiana trying to uncover what this growing LNG industry means for the state. But, after talking with everyone – from shrimpers to energy insiders – we realized that the stakes were far bigger. If we really wanted to tell the whole story, we had to travel even...

Sea Change is back with a brand new season. And this time, the stakes are even higher. We launch new investigations, travel around the world, and look at how a sea change is underway to solve some of our biggest problems. Come with us to investigate and celebrate life on our changing coasts. Every two weeks, we bring you stories that illuminate, inspire, and sometimes enrage, as we dive deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. We have a lot...

Sea Change is taking a short break before Season 2 launches in March, and we plan to start the season off with a bang. Last fall, we traveled all over the world to report a series about a massive expansion of fossil fuels on the Gulf Coast and what it could mean for the planet. We are very excited to share it with you soon, but in the meantime, we wanted to bring you some great podcasts that we love. On to a New Year’s resolution we are actually keeping! Spend more time on what gives us...

Sometimes, it can be hard to find the bright spots amid feelings of uncertainty about the future of our planet. But they're there. Today on Sea Change, we're focusing entirely on solutions. Stories about the good. We hear about a landscape architect in China who's pushing his city to become spongier as part of the global push for cities to rip up their concrete. And whether recognizing a river or forest's legal right to exist could help save our world.We also hear from two experts about how...

There are only around 51 Rice’s whales left in the world. And they’re the only whale that stays in one country’s territory: they live exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico…in US waters. A uniquely American whale. This also means the responsibility to protect these whales lies with the United States, but are we protecting them? That’s a question NPR Investigations reporter, Chiara Eisner had. With so few Rice’s whales left on the planet, she wanted to know what–if anything–is being done to...

There are only around 51 Rice’s whales left in the world. And they’re the only whale that stays in one country’s territory: they live exclusively in the Gulf of Mexico…in US waters. A uniquely American whale. This also means the responsibility to protect these whales lies with the United States, but are we protecting them? That’s a question NPR Investigations reporter, Chiara Eisner had. With so few Rice’s whales left on the planet, she wanted to know what–if anything–is being done to...

Today, we are exploring a growing threat to our freshwater supplies in coastal regions all over the country. With climate change, we are experiencing sea-level rise and more frequent droughts, both of which make it easier for saltwater to creep into places we don’t want it. First, we go to Plaquemines Parish, an area that’s been dealing with the effects of saltwater intrusion on their drinking water for months. An extreme drought across the Midwest has meant a less-than-mighty Mississippi....

As we experience worsening impacts from climate change, we’re wondering: How can we rethink engineering? Instead of trying to control nature, can we design with nature? There are more than a thousand miles of levees and floodgates lining each side of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Thousands of dams also hold back water and sediment throughout the Mississippi basin. But the thing is, you can’t totally harness a river such as the Mississippi. And, research has shown that our...

Today on Sea Change, we are bringing you an episode from our friends at KQED. The story you’re about to hear is from the third season of their podcast called Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America. Climate change is intensifying wet periods across California, untaming waterways humans corralled with dirt and concrete. In this episode, “Searching for Home on Higher Ground,” reporter Ezra David Romero takes us to Pajaro, California, where he asks a question that many of us here on the Gulf...

As natural disasters worsen and extreme weather grows more frequent, it’s led to more people being displaced across the planet. Sometimes, we call those people climate migrants. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in the last year alone, around 3 million Americans were displaced by natural disasters. But for some climate migrants, displacement isn’t always so immediate or apparent, but it is often tangled up in bureaucracy and a broken system. Today on Sea Change, we explore what it means...

Kemp's Ridleys are the most endangered sea turtle on the planet...can they lose their nickname of the "heartbreak turtle"? Today, we go on a journey to the remote Chandeleur islands to try to find the mysterious Kemp’s Ridley turtles, who, after 75 years, have been discovered on the shores of Louisiana. It’s a story of loss and restoration, of hope and heartbreak. Hosted by Sea Change managing producer Carlyle Calhoun. Editing help by Nora Saks, Garrett Hazelwood, and Halle Parker. Our sound...

Earlier this year, we told the story of how a change in the White House had the potential to turn the tide for Black communities fighting against environmental pollution in Louisiana's industrial corridor nicknamed Cancer Alley — one of the country's largest hotspots for toxic air. The Environmental Protection Agency's new leader pledged to use all the tools in his toolbox to deliver "environmental justice," and his agency launched a groundbreaking investigation into alleged civil rights...

Today marks the beginning of a whole new industry here in the Gulf of Mexico: offshore wind energy. The Biden administration opened the first-ever wind lease sale in the Gulf, and 300,000 acres of the Gulf will be auctioned off. Companies will now bid for the rights to put giant wind turbines off the coast of southwest Louisiana and east Texas. It’s a big day to say the least. And there’s been a whole lot of excitement leading up to the lease sale. It even has bipartisan support. And this...

It's summertime. Most of us hope to spend time on the beach, or by a river, or a pool, and we thought we'd try to understand why? Why do we want to be by water, and why does it make us feel so good? And it’s not just us. Understanding how the power of water makes us healthier and happier is actually a growing field of research. Today, we're diving into our human connection to oceans and how we can harness that love of water to help us protect the largest gulf in the world -- our own Gulf of...

Humans have always used stories to make sense of the world…that’s just how our brains work. And, so it makes sense that we need stories to help us understand the enormity of climate change. Today, we talk with Jeff Goodell, Katharine Wilkinson, and Nathaniel Rich—three authors who write books that people want to read…maybe can’t put down…about the biggest existential threat of our time: climate change. For more information about the authors and their books featured in today’s episode,...

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

We know that everyone has a role in tackling the climate crisis, so what about artists? We talk with Atlanta-based artist Heather Bird Harris, who has begun making her own paint out of the earth to talk about environmental crises in Louisiana. And we sit down with ecologist Ashley Booth and historian Jeffery Darensbourg to hear how art can combine with other disciplines to communicate in a way they can't. Then, we go to A Studio in the Woods — literally, a studio tucked deep in the woods —...

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

Today we are bringing you an episode from a new podcast from our friends at Colorado Public Radio. The podcast is called Parched, and it’s about how the multi-decade drought in the West is impacting the Colorado River. It’s about people who rely on the river that shaped the West—and have ideas to save it. For those of us living here in the Mississippi River basin, climate change is leading to extreme rainfall and historic floods. But out West, they are dealing with the opposite problem—far...

When we talk about climate change, we hear one word all the time: resilient. We use it to talk about everything from our houses, to our power grid, to ourselves. Earlier this spring, we asked our listeners to tell us how you feel about this word. And you blew up our voicemail box. In this episode of Sea Change, we hear your responses. And we ask: how can we address the physical forces of climate change and the broken social systems that make it an even greater threat? We hear stories about...

Food connects us to our past, to our memories, to each other, and to the world around us. It’s powerful. But food systems–from how we grow or catch things to how we transport them –are also incredibly complex. As climate change increasingly impacts the world, we are seeing some of the first effects of that through our food. So we’ve been wondering… How can we keep enjoying the food we love to eat without hurting the ecosystems it comes from? And how can we support the people who make a...

Louisiana is home to the country's largest hotspot for toxic air — an industrial corridor nicknamed “Cancer Alley.” More than 150 petrochemical plants line the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Amid the boom, many Black communities live with a disproportionate amount of pollution. But years of protest have begun to bear fruit. We travel the Mississippi River to learn what has allowed the industry to flourish on its banks, see how the tide might turn in one neighborhood’s...