Environment

Global warming and melting ice are rapidly changing the landscape of the Earth's polar regions. What will it mean for life at the poles, and for the rest of the world? Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland has seen this environmental transformation for himself. He’s the first person to complete solo expeditions across both the North and South Poles. In 2010, he completed the Northern Passage – a circumnavigation of the entire Arctic ocean. He joins us to talk about his adventures in the vast, frozen tundra of the poles.

Seattle and Portland are among the best cities to dine on seafood if you want the salmon, sole or halibut you order to actually be salmon, sole or halibut. The two Northwest cities emerged from a national report Thursday with some of the lowest rates of “fish fraud” in the country.

According to the research project by the marine conservation group, Oceana, 33 percent of the 1,215 samples of fish it had analyzed were not actually the fish that they were labeled as by the sushi bars, restaurants and retail outlets selling them.

Wind can be a very significant power provider in the United States, especially in the Midwest. Environmental lawyer and writer Philip Warburg talks about wind as a resource, including how it relates to the economy and climate change. He spoke at Seattle's Town Hall on December 4, 2012. The talk was introduced by Denis Hayes, CEO of the Bullitt Foundation and coordinator of the first Earth Day.

North Dakota is booming. The state's unemployment rate is just 3.2 percent — well below the national average of 7.9 percent. Officials are trying to keep pace with a population surge brought on by oil industry jobs that have made North Dakota the country's number two oil-producing state. But what will extracting millions of barrels from the Bakken oil field mean for the region's environmental and economic future? Writer and reporter Richard Manning joins us with the story of North Dakota's oil boom.

Al Gore has been delving into the future. The former vice president and media mogul (he just sold his Current TV network to Al-Jazeera English) says we are at the dawn of a new era.

In his new book, “The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change,” he takes an in-depth look at major shifts occurring in the world: globalization linked to automation and digital connections that are shaping a world where fewer workers are needed; population growth coinciding with a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots; new biological breakthroughs that are bringing humans into control of evolution.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says he wants to defeat climate change. Rather than taxing carbon or pursuing a cap-and-trade system to restrict the emission of greenhouse gases, the Democratic state executive wants more clean energy research and development.