Air Date: Week of February 23, 2007

Host Steve Curwood announces that Living on Earth shares this year’s prestigious George Polk award for radio journalism, for the series “Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet.”

Transcript

CURWOOD: Climate change has been a key topic for Living on Earth over the past fifteen years. And I’m pleased to report that our special series on the early signs of climate change around the world is sharing this year’s prestigious George Polk Award for radio journalism. Our eight stories, from around the world, were produced together with the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Salon dot com, and American Public Media.

Eleven UC Berkeley graduate students traveled to the shores of Lake Tanganyika, to the crowded delta of Bangladesh, the snowy slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and to the Andes to bring back tales like this one, of the real-life miseries and perils already caused by global warming.

CORNEJO [VOICEOVER]: Global warming is not the fault of third-world countries. We’re dancing at a party that we didn't even want to attend. But we’re beginning to change our habits anyways, and we'll have to keep doing that. If we don't, climate change will grab hold of us and we’ll disappear.

CURWOOD: A special thanks and congratulations to those student reporters, and also to Sandy Tolan, long time Living on Earth contributor and UC journalism professor who conceived the idea. And a big tip of the hat to Living on Earth’s Chris Ballman, Dennis Foley and especially Ingrid Lobet- who did the lion’s share of the editing with my assistance. Living on Earth is proud to be in fine company with eleven other news teams that won the Polk this year, including High Country News for Political Reporting and the Los Angeles Times for Environmental Reporting

You can find links to works of all the winners on our web site, l-o-e.org and also an interview with Ken Weiss ,co-author of the LA Times series on our altered oceans.
That’s www.loe.org.

 

Links

Living on Earth's Special Series "Early Signs: Reports From a Warming Planet"

2006 George Polk Award winners

To listen to an interview with 2006 George Polk Award-winner and Los Angeles Times reporter Kenneth Weiss about his 5-part winning series "Altered Oceans" click here