In last month’s election, Boulder voters gave the go-ahead for the city to move forward on municipalizing the electrical utility. The chief motivation for that decision was to put more renewable energy on the grid. There are a large number of policy options to incentivize renewable energy – so many that it’s hard to keep them all straight. John Farrell, a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, joined us by phone to explain the situation. (interview begins at 6:25)
Mountainous areas like the Rockies are hotspots for plant and animal biodiversity but as the climate warms many of these species – including Colorado’s iconic pica — are under threat. Much research has focused on the effects of temperature change, but less has focused on the interactions of temperature and precipitation in a changing climate. University of Colorado biologist Christy McCain is closely examining those inter-relationships. She’s been studying patterns of diversity for plants and critters on mountains around the world. She co-authored a paper that was recently published in the journal Ecology Letters about how precipitation changes appear to be far more risky than temperature change. And it doesn’t bode well for many species. (interview begins at 14:58).
Producer: Tom McKinnon
Co-Hosts: Susan Moran and Tom McKinnon
Engineer: Jim Pullen
Executive Producer: Tom McKinnon
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elley Schlender visited with Colorado State University Scientist and Paleolithic Lifestyle expert 
One often hears people state “I’m not good at math” or that they don’t like math because it they don’t think it has any relevance to their day-to-day life (other than, maybe, to balance a checkbook). However, both of those myths are addressed head-on in a new book titled “
Susan Moran has a telephone interview with 
Jeff Branson of the 
Feature #1 (time mark 5:30) When people think of Colorado, they usually don’t think about “oceans”. After all, Colorado doesn’t have much of a coastline these days, though it was definitely had oceanfront property a few hundred million years ago. However, being in a landlocked state doesn’t mean that there isn’t any thing we can do to impact the health and ecology of the ocean and marine biology. Co-host Joel Parker talks with Vicki Goldstein, founder and president of the 
Feature #2 (time mark 14:10) Nitrogen – we can’t live without it, but you can have too much of a good thing. In its gaseous form nitrogen is harmless and makes up nearly 80 percent of the atmosphere. The worldwide population never would have reached 7 billion people without nitrogen, in the form of chemical fertilizer. But excess nitrogen –from fertilizer runoff, manure, human sewage and other sources is wreaking havoc on the environment. Co-host Susan Moran talks with John Mischler, a PhD student at CU Boulder, who is researching worms and snails in Colorado and Africa. He talks about how excess nutrients in ponds, lakes and elsewhere can lead to the spread of parasitic disease from trematodes to snails to us.
Tom McKinnon and 
Shelley Schlender interviews 
On today’s pledge drive show we played excerpts from an interview with evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins about his new book, The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True. The book was also featured as a promotional gift for listeners who chose to support KGNU, the independent community radio station that makes shows like How On Earth possible. We now bring you an extended version of that interview.