This Week’s Show
May 29, 2026
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U.N. Affirms Climate Duty
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More than two-thirds of U.N. members recently voted in favor of a resolution affirming a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice that countries have a legal obligation to limit global warming. While this advisory opinion is not enforceable, it will likely be cited in lawsuits and appeals as a fact in the fight against climate disruption.

World Cup in a Warming World
listen / download
The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup will mostly take place during the North American summer, and the prospect of extreme heat prompted a group of current and former players to write an open letter to FIFA calling for better protection of players. Stuart Parkinson, a co-author of the 2025 report “FIFA’s Climate Blind Spot: The Men’s World Cup in a Warming World”, talks about the risks for players and fans as well as the climate costs of the 2026 games.

Note on Emerging Science: Sea 'Lavender' Stores Carbon
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Sea ‘lavender,’ a purple flowering plant also known as statice that grows abundantly in salt marshes and coasts around the world, appears to be excellent at removing planet-warming carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in soils. Living on Earth’s Julia Vaz reports on this recent research.

Terry Tempest Williams on 'The Glorians'
listen / download
The Utah desert with its raw beauty has long been a muse for writer Terry Tempest Williams. In her 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, she explores miraculous moments of grace that call for our attention, even in spaces that may at first seem unremarkable. Terry joined us for an online Living on Earth Book Club event.

 

Air Date: May 29, 2026

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U.N. Affirms Climate Duty


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More than two-thirds of U.N. members recently voted in favor of a resolution affirming a landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice that countries have a legal obligation to limit global warming. While this advisory opinion is not enforceable, it will likely be cited in lawsuits and appeals as a fact in the fight against climate disruption. Inside Climate News reporter Bob Berwyn speaks with Host Jenni Doering about the significance of the ruling and its U.N. adoption. (12:08)

World Cup in a Warming World


View the page for this story

The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup will mostly take place during the North American summer, and the prospect of extreme heat prompted a group of current and former players to write an open letter to FIFA calling for better protection of players. Stuart Parkinson, a co-author of the 2025 report “FIFA’s Climate Blind Spot: The Men’s World Cup in a Warming World”, talks with Host Steve Curwood about the risks for players and fans as well as the climate costs of the 2026 games. (07:35)

Note on Emerging Science: Sea 'Lavender' Stores Carbon


View the page for this story

Sea ‘lavender,’ a purple flowering plant also known as statice that grows abundantly in salt marshes and coasts around the world, appears to be excellent at removing planet-warming carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in soils. Living on Earth’s Julia Vaz reports on this recent research. (02:17)

Terry Tempest Williams on 'The Glorians'


View the page for this story

The Utah desert with its raw beauty has long been a muse for writer Terry Tempest Williams. In her 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, she explores miraculous moments of grace that call for our attention, even in spaces that may at first seem unremarkable. Terry Tempest Williams joined Hosts Steve Curwood and Jenni Doering for an online Living on Earth Book Club event. (24:15)

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Show Transcript

260529 Transcript

HOSTS: Steve Curwood, Jenni Doering

GUESTS: Bob Berwyn, Stuart Parkinson, Terry Tempest Williams

REPORTERS: Julia Vaz

[THEME]

CURWOOD: I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

The UN affirms a high court decision on countries’ climate obligations.

BERWYN: A really important thing is that the court tied human rights and the climate issue so closely together, and really re-emphasized that the right to a healthy, livable environment is the most fundamental human right of all.

CURWOOD: Also, writer Terry Tempest Williams on finding the “holy ordinary” in the desert.

WILLIAMS: For 3 hours we walked that path of water and talked to each other and learned from each other. We had a hydrologist amongst us, we had a geologist amongst us. And these are the kinds of things that I think bring us together and remind us what we share rather than what tears us apart.

CURWOOD: That and more, this week on Living on Earth. Stick around!

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[NEWSBREAK MUSIC: Boards Of Canada “Zoetrope” from “In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country” (Warp Records 2000)]

[THEME]

U.N. Affirms Climate Duty

CURWOOD: From PRX and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this is Living on Earth. I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

141 nations, that’s more than two thirds of UN members, have now formally affirmed a landmark high court ruling on climate change.
In 2025 the International Court of Justice, or ICJ found that countries have an international legal obligation to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Though not enforceable, this ruling will likely be cited in lawsuits and appeals as a fact in the fight against climate disruption.

CURWOOD: Just eight nations voted against the UN resolution supporting the ICJ opinion, including Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, which is the only country that has backed out of the UN Paris Agreement. In their 2025 opinion, all fifteen judges found that every country is responsible for any climate related harms it inflicts on others, even if it withdraws from treaties like the Paris Agreement. As it voted “no” the US complained the resolution “makes alarmist political statements.”

DOERING: In recent days, though, the planet’s vital signs have been flashing red as Europe and Southeast Asia swelter under record-breaking heat. Bob Berwyn, a reporter for our media partner Inside Climate News, is following the story and he joins us now. Welcome back to Living on Earth Bob!

BERWYN: Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here.

DOERING: So, let's go back to this advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice, who brought that issue to the ICJ, and why?

BERWYN: The campaign started with a group of students in the Pacific Islands region in 2019 and they started a grassroots push, and then got some governments involved. First and foremost, the government of Vanuatu, which then championed this request to the ICJ, and did the hard work of building a political coalition at the United Nations to get the general assembly to request the advisory opinion from the court. And why they did it, there's a few different reasons, and if you think back to 2019, it was the height of the climate movement. And there were marches every week, Fridays for Future marches, millions of young people, not just young people on the streets nearly every week all over the world. And this group of students saw that energy and thought, wow, how can we focus that into something even more concrete than just turning people out on the street. And in talking to one of the organizers there, the underlying thought was they were kind of looking at the world — they're all from countries that are really being ravaged by climate change already, they're losing land to the sea, arable land, some villages have had to relocate, salt water is intruding into drinking systems, they're literally being consumed by rising sea level from global warming — and they thought to themselves: in what world can it be fair that a handful, really a tiny minority of very rich countries, did this damage all over the world to hundreds of countries that really had no responsibility for that damage and not be held accountable for that. So that's what kind of was their deep motivation for seeking this advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice.

DOERING: Yeah, and so the International Court of Justice did conclude that countries have a legal responsibility to act to prevent the climate crisis from worsening. Of course, it was an advisory opinion, it's not necessarily a legally binding opinion, but why did they come to that conclusion?

BERWYN: I think it's important to realize that they didn't really invent any new law from scratch. They reviewed existing international law, human rights treaties, different environmental laws, the Paris Agreement, ocean laws, and just longstanding legal principles about preventing harm across borders, even without a specific law in any one country, there's just a longstanding international norm that generally countries should act in a way that whatever they do in their own country doesn't harm any other countries outside of their borders. And this 15 judge panel also included a lot of scientific evidence. They looked at IPCC reports, the International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They had a briefing with experts from a research group called the World Weather Attribution, which looks at links between global warming and different climate extremes, and can estimate by studying those how global warming made them worse, or stronger hurricanes, or more intense rainfall, and they took testimony, they took testimony from hundreds of people and thousands of written pages, statements from people who are being affected by climate change, and then they mulled it over, as a high court often does, and I think it's important to remember that this is a 15 judge panel and these are some of the top legal minds from countries from all over the world, from every continent, with vastly different legal systems, and some are from conservative countries that have a stake in producing fossil fuels. Nonetheless, these 15 judges all came to find unanimously that under all these existing laws they applied that to climate and said clearly: countries have obligations to avoid harms from climate-polluting gasses, just like other harms. Just like you can't go pull your ship into some other country's harbor and start dumping out sewage water, you can't just dump your waste product into the atmosphere either — that's basically what they're saying — without consequences.

DOERING: And how specific did they get in this advisory opinion? You know, did they prescribe any steps that nations need to take?

BERWYN: They don't have the power to prescribe steps or to punish somebody or to call somebody in and, you know, order them to explain themselves. That's not really the way it works. They pointed out that, according to the best understanding of all applicable environmental laws and treaties internationally, that countries have a duty to try and avoid that harm, and said that if they don't, that potentially they could be held responsible for that, not by the ICJ, but by another court, or depending on how the future legal landscape evolves. You know, legal frameworks don't just instantly, you don't just have a decision and then it's all there, right? We operate in the US on a constitution that's 250 years old, and we still weekly have arguments over words in that constitution about what they actually mean.

DOERING: Yeah.

BERWYN: And international laws is somewhat the same, and I described it in a story I wrote about this as a legal structure, a legal framework like this being a bit like a coral reef with different accretions being added on to each other and building a strong structure that eventually becomes strong enough to change the currents around it. And that's what's emerging, not just with this ICJ case. I think it was pretty clear all the people that were involved in that celebrated the vote at the UN, and the opinion as a step forward to climate action. They said this isn't a silver bullet, this isn't going to stop climate change. It's another step in a long process of building a new legal framework that hopefully will allow countries to get a better handle on climate pollution.

DOERING: The International Court of Justice opinion was just recently affirmed by the UN General Assembly. Some 141 member states voted yes to say we do agree with this advisory opinion. What exactly happened there?

BERWYN: So the General Assembly requested the advisory opinion to begin with, and that's happened in other areas of international jurisprudence or law as well, and then after the International Court of Justice releases something like that, it's sort of customary that the UN look at it again now that what they asked for has been delivered and had some debates on it, and then looked for a vote to welcome this opinion from the court and to incorporate it into the whole kind of United Nations governance structure as much as possible.

DOERING: And so what does incorporating it mean?

BERWYN: There's a couple of good specific examples. Some countries are already referring to the advisory opinion as they submit new climate targets to the Paris process, to the ongoing UN process, and I'm sure when they meet, for example, in six months at COP in Turkey at the annual climate conference, there will be a lot of discussion of the ICJ advisory opinion. It was pretty new at the last COP in Brazil, so people were talking about it a little bit, but I would say that people who offer thoughts on negotiations there will have to consider this new opinion, and if what they're proposing is consistent with what the advisory opinion says.

DOERING: Yeah, and Bob, the opinion states that countries are legally obligated to prevent the climate crisis from getting worse, but you know we have seen the international community fail on legal obligations time and time again when it comes to human rights, so what does legally obligated mean in this case? And how can courts hold countries accountable when it comes to this part of the law?

BERWYN: Right, ICJ can't send climate violators to jail or force government to shut down oil fields or coal burning power plants, they just don't have the power to do that. There's no international authority that can do that, but it could potentially strengthen lawsuits. There's a lawsuit in Holland right now in the Netherlands against Shell Oil Company, and they were ordered by a lower court to reduce their emissions 45% by 2050 and then an appeals court overturned that, and right now it's in front of the Netherlands Supreme Court, and for sure before that case is over, somebody's going to mention, or already has, the ICJ advisory opinion saying, "look, there's a body of international law out there that exists, and was just sort of affirmed by the UN that you can't just keep polluting without consequence, you have to reduce your emissions." Whether or not the Netherlands Supreme Court in that case takes that to heart or mentions it in a decision remains to be seen. I would expect to see some international court rulings over the next couple of years that very clearly call on the ICJ resolution and highlight it and mention it when they make a decision on a particular climate case.

DOERING: Bob Berwyn is a reporter for our media partner, Inside Climate News, and he's based in Austria. Thank you so much, Bob.

BERWYN: Thank you for having me.

Related links:
- Inside Climate News | “A Youth-Led Campaign Claims a Win For Climate Justice”
- Inside Climate News | “U.N. General Assembly Embraces Court Opinion That Says Nations Have a Legal Obligation to Take Climate Action”

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[MUSIC: Kapono Beamer, “Old Plantation” on Pana Aloha (Hawaiian Heartbeat), by Kapono Beamer, Kapono Beamer Enterprises, Ltd]

CURWOOD: Coming up, the world’s biggest athletic event, on a warming planet.

PARKINSON: We estimated that this World Cup would produce emissions of about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide, that's equivalent to about six and a half million British cars being driven for a year. So it is a substantial amount of emissions. The vast majority of those emissions are due to aviation, so people flying to North America to watch the tournament and flying around within North America between matches.

CURWOOD: FIFA and the climate challenge is just ahead, stay tuned to Living on Earth.

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the Waverley Street Foundation, working to cultivate a healing planet with community-led programs for better food, healthy farmlands, and smarter building, energy and businesses.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Kapono Beamer, “Pua Mae'ole” on Pana Aloha (Hawaiian Heartbeat), by Kapono Beamer, Kapono Beamer Enterprises, Ltd]

World Cup in a Warming World

DOERING: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Jenni Doering

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.

[kick sound]

“Into the galaxy of greats! “

CURWOOD: The 2022 FIFA World Cup championship game that December saw the crowd go wild as Argentina scored against France –

“Angel Di Maria - Glorious goal! Argentine goal! “

CURWOOD: Not enough to avoid a tie, but the win finally came in a penalty shoot out.

[kick – cheers – ]

“Argentina – champions of the world!”

[cheers]

CURWOOD: And now, four years later the World Cup kicks off again, not starting in winter in Qatar but near the long days of summer in June in Mexico City.

DOERING: The Qatari games were moved to avoid the searing heat of the Persian Gulf summer, but even so, some of the early rounds were played at temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Four years later this World Cup is not likely to be any cooler and there is a chance it will be even hotter. Since 2022 global warming has kept pushing temperatures up, rising from an average 1.2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to 1.4 degrees higher today. And on the way, in 2024 we recorded the hottest year in human history.

CURWOOD: Some billion and a half people are expected to watch the final match on TV and have the option of air conditioning, but the players as well as most soccer fans attending the 104 games to be played in Mexico, the US and Canada, will not. The prospect of extreme heat prompted a group of current and former players to write an open letter to FIFA calling for better protection of players. And they say Aramco’s sponsorship promotes the oil and gas giant, sending the wrong message during the climate emergency. Stuart Parkinson is a co-author of the 2025 report “FIFA’s Climate Blind Spot: The Men’s World Cup in a warming world”. We called him at his home in Lancaster, England. Dr. Parkinson, welcome to Living On Earth!

PARKINSON: Thank you.

CURWOOD: So, Stuart, you're among a group of scientists who recently co-signed an open letter to FIFA warning that its current heat safety measures for the men's 2026 World Cup are inadequate and could put players at risk of serious harm. What is the concern here? What are the conditions that you think could result in harm for them?

PARKINSON: The particular problem that the letter pointed to was heat stress. The temperature levels that look likely to be occurring at some of the matches, particularly in the southern United States and Mexico, looked like they could exceed what is considered by the players association, the football players association, safe limits. And they define these as 28 degrees in using a scale called the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature. And that's temperature but takes account of humidity and other factors that put stress on the body, and FIFA has decided that they think that players and indeed fans can cope with higher temperatures up to 32 degrees. And we're arguing that you should be paying attention to what the player's body is saying, and if temperature is likely to be above the 28-degree Wet Bulb Globe Temperature level, then you need to be delaying the match, or indeed postponing the match.

CURWOOD: When you say you said a 30-degree limit, they're talking about a 32- degree limit.

PARKINSON: 32

CURWOOD: Yeah. So, of course, here in the United States, we are backwards, and we use the Fahrenheit scale, so we're talking about something around 85 or 87 degrees. Then, at 32 degrees Celsius.

PARKINSON: Yeah.

CURWOOD: That's kind of toasty. I mean, I'm not sure I would want to walk my dog rapidly in that temperature.

PARKINSON: This is a Wet Bulb Temperature, so you have to bear in mind that the adjustments for humidity mean that if the humidity is low and the apparent temperature is lower, but if the humidity is high, then it makes it much more dangerous.

CURWOOD: Well, and where the matches are, most of the places are going to be looking at higher humidity in the summertime, as opposed to being very dry places. So, what are you suggesting to FIFA that they do about this? What's the answer?

PARKINSON: All that can be done at the moment is to delay the match or postpone the match if these conditions look likely to be occurring. They should be adding cooling breaks. They promised to add cooling breaks, but these are not really long enough or frequent enough to be sufficient to deal with the higher temperatures, and rescheduling them well. They could have scheduled them better. Some timings have been changed, but they need to change more of them, really. And, of course, there are other weather risks, you know, the hurricane season is starting in the Southeast of the U.S. and around Mexico, the wildfire season in the Southwest, the tornado season in the middle. It's not a good situation. It's not a good time of the year, but to be playing these sorts of matches.

CURWOOD: So, of course, there are other climate aspects to this World Cup. I believe that you and your colleagues have estimated something on the scale of eight, nine, 10 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, just to move people around. Give me a concrete example of how much carbon we're talking about here?

PARKINSON: So, we estimated that this World Cup would produce emissions of about 9 million tons of carbon dioxide, that's equivalent to about six and a half million British cars being driven for a year. So it is a substantial amount of emissions. The vast majority of those emissions are due to aviation, so people flying to North America to watch the tournament and flying around within North America between matches, and it's particularly high this time because the tournament is larger. It used to be 64 matches, it's now 104 matches at this tournament, and of course, it's spread across a whole continent, the whole of North America, whereas before it's been in a single country or maybe two countries that are close together.

CURWOOD: Stuart, somebody listening to us right now may say, "Oh, I want to see this tournament. What can a football fan do to reduce the carbon footprint during this upcoming tournament?

PARKINSON: Yeah, I mean, the basic issue is I encourage people to watch it from home or watch it with their friends at a local bar or pub, that's what most people do. If you are traveling to the tournament, then if you can at least do things like share a car or go and see the tournament in one of the cooler parts of the country, will reduce your risk. Depends whether that's an option for you, it is a difficult situation. The USA has very poor surface public transport, so the alternatives to flying are quite minimal. It would be better to go and see a match closer to where you live, rather than crossing the country. That may restrict your choice of which match to see, but that's another thing to consider.

CURWOOD: Stuart Parkinson is executive director of scientists for Global Responsibility Stuart, thanks so much for speaking with us today.

PARKINSON: Thank you very much.

Related links:
- Learn more about the potential risks for players during this year’s World Cup
- Read the official letter to FIFA from the Scientists for Global Responsibility

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[MUSIC: The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army” on Elephant, Third Man Records]

Note on Emerging Science: Sea 'Lavender' Stores Carbon

DOERING: In a moment, encountering wonder in the desert, but first this note on emerging science from Living on Earth’s Julia Vaz.

[SCIENCE NOTE THEME]

VAZ: East or West, the United States seaside is dotted with purple. The plant Sea Lavender grows abundantly in salt marshes. Which makes for a beautiful picture: mixing with the blue of the sea, soft green grass, and golden dunes. Beyond striking, sea lavender is also a powerful fighter against climate change. Researchers in Venice, Italy, where sea lavender also grows, recently found that the plant is excellent at storing carbon. The researchers from the University of Padova spent the summers of 2021 and 2023 knee-deep in salt marshes in Venice collecting data on different plots of vegetation. They found that the plots with more sea lavender had higher rates of carbon stored, meaning that the plants were able to effectively remove more planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Unlike the fragrant lavender you might be more familiar with, sea lavender is a very different plant. It tolerates salt and flooding. And, underground, its roots grow in rhizomes.

Instead of shooting straight down, a rhizome grows horizontally, sending out many more shoots and roots. That allows them to protect salt marshes from erosion and boost biodiversity by increasing the number of plants in the ecosystem. But salt marshes are quickly disappearing across the globe. Just in the United States, over half of the country’s salt marshes have been lost to development. Those ecosystems protect coasts from rising seas and severe impacts from storms. They are also full of unique biodiversity–including sea lavender. Continuing to destroy salt marshes and sea lavender would mean losing an important tool against climate change. It would also mean turning beautiful coasts across the globe into emptier landscapes. That’s this week’s note on emerging science. I’m Julia Vaz.

Related link:
Grist | “The Beautiful Venetian Plant With a Secret Climate Superpower”

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[SCIENCE NOTE THEME]

Terry Tempest Williams on 'The Glorians'

[DESERT SOUNDS]

DOERING: At first glance, a desert may appear barren. But it’s actually a place teeming with life. There are coyotes –

https://freesound.org/people/Marnie.Devereux/sounds/398600/

DOERING: Wind in the cottonwood trees…

https://freesound.org/people/Danjocross/sounds/579250/

DOERING: ….a never ending night sky, and once in a while, water comes and goes with a ferocity.

https://freesound.org/people/foosiemac/sounds/95130/

DOERING: The Utah desert with its raw beauty has long been a muse for writer Terry Tempest Williams, who lives in Castle Valley. Her environmental classic Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place interwove a story of environmental crisis with her mother’s battle with cancer.

CURWOOD: In her 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, Terry explores miraculous moments of grace that call for our attention, even in spaces that may at first seem unremarkable. She told us her book came to her in a dream in 2020 during the pandemic. And Terry Tempest Williams joined us for an online Living on Earth Book Club event. We asked her to start off by reading from a passage near the beginning of her book, one of her first encounters with a “Glorian.”

WILLIAMS: In late spring, fierce winds converge in our valley in the Red Rock Desert, a reliable occurrence that has shaped this erosional landscape. The winds are particularly strong one morning in May. I am outside admiring the coyote willow draped in magenta flowers, each one resembling a snapdragon blossom, only larger the length of my index finger. Suddenly, in a swoop of wind, our stone patio is strewn with flowers. They are too lovely to let lie. So I decide to gather them and bring them inside. I get a basket from the kitchen. When I return to the patio, the wind has blown most of them away. I bend down to pick one up, only to see it move. Not only does it move, it has legs. I realize the blossom is being transported by an ant. This wee little being appears as a small black boat with a large pink sail above its six-legged body, I follow it. for close to half an hour I walk behind the ant as it carries a petal clutched in its mandibles and moves across the patio at a quick and steady pace. It continues down the stone path from our porch, then sets off across the red sand, where I can see in the distance a thriving ant colony emerging from the desert floor like a raised fist. Each time a breeze comes up, threatening to blow the tiny ant over. A pair of attending ants appear to hold the ant steady, then disappear. Each time the ant is about to cross a perilous path, facing cracks between stones, again a pair of ants appear to ferry the ant across the chasm, and again disappear. The ant continues on its mission, projecting its strange shadow ahead as it approaches a wide patch of prickly pear. I think surely this will be its demise. The flower impaled by a spine, and then miraculously three ants appear to help lift the blossom above, around and over the cacti, and once on open ground, vanish. When the ant finally arrives at the ant colony I watch it slowly climb up the hill with the magnificent blossom intact. The ant reaches its destination, pauses, then lays the flower down at the entrance of its home, where it is instantly met by dozens of workers, who, in a frenzy of purpose, cut the flower into tiny pieces, each one carrying a part of the pink blossom down into their chambers, where I imagine they are lining a pathway to the queen. This is a glorian, the ant carrying the coyote blossom across the desert is a glorian, and a glorian is an encounter, a glorian in is a meeting with Elon Vital, a glorian in is a moment of grace.

CURWOOD: Thank you. I mean, you see why we have Terry with us with this book now, and why we are so lucky to have you with us, and be able to read this volume. You know, Terry, the last time we talked to you, we discussed your book, Erosion, and it was our last big live event before the pandemic.

WILLIAMS: I remember that.

CURWOOD: At the Cambridge Public Library. So, what's happened in your life since then?

WILLIAMS: You know, it's really bookhanded by you. I have to say, it's so interesting how life holds itself. What's happened to me? We weathered the pandemic. We now have a million citizens that we lost. All of us know someone that passed during this time. I've been teaching at the Harvard Divinity School, and we've been able to bring 20 students to Great Salt Lake as it's retreating, and that was so meaningful to see these students from Cambridge literally have 10 days in the wild where they could enter sun tunnels by Nancy Holt, that land art, or walk through Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, but most importantly, into the waters and feel the power of Great Salt Lake as our sacred mother, which our brothers and sisters in the Ute Nation have admonished us to call her that. We've also been through a lot together. We have a president that is beyond politics, and I think what we've seen is that alongside extraordinary cruelty we have seen extraordinary compassion, and I feel that at this moment of uncertainty, where there's so much beauty that remains, this is a place where we can stand steady.

CURWOOD: Thank you. This is not an easy place, though, to stand steady, is it?

WILLIAMS: No, it isn't, and change is all around us. Again, I think living in an erosional landscape where we are shaped by wind, water, and time, there's no expectation that things aren't going to change, and that might make it a little bit easier.

DOERING: Well, Terry, I wonder if one of the ways that you ground yourself in this time of uncertainty and change, you write about these night walks that you take in the desert, and you have this wonderful passage on page 31 You write, "deserts are nocturnal landscapes alive with creatures aligned with darkness, I move among them." What is it about this walking at night practice that really captivates you?

WILLIAMS: You know, it really was out of necessity, because during the pandemic in the summer it was so hot. I think we had 52 days of blistering heat, over 100 it got as high as 116 and you can't walk in the day when it's that hot, and so I thought I can walk at night, and what I learned is that our eyes adapt to darkness, and especially in the light of full moon, the red rocks become blue, you see the eye shine of deer, if you're lucky enough, you see the eye shine of coyote red and the eye shine of a jackrabbit that is red like flames, and you become so familiar with the changing sky, depending on the time of night that you go, that you begin to feel very comfortable orienting around a rotating sky, even the Milky Way rotates, and I had never experienced before, and I think it was about my eyes adjusting to the dark, how the Milky Way becomes dimensional. It wasn't just a smudge of stars, but actually you could almost pull it out into a third, fourth dimension. It was very wild, and I had a partner, Bianca, who she was 30 at the time, I was in my early 60s, and she was in Vermont, I was in Utah, and we ended up doing night walks together and writing letters to one another, audio letters, and I could hardly wait till the next morning to find out what my companion, my night walk companion saw where I was seeing deer, she was seeing cows where I was seeing the Milky Way, she was imagining it. So I think we found our people, whether they were the pods within us in proximity or our night walking companions.

DOERING: It's a lovely idea, the audio letters.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and I felt like I knew her so well that when we did a moon cycle from full moon to full moon, and when it was over, I think both of us grieved that intimacy of not only walking at night, knowing the other was walking too, but recording the letters, and then receiving them, and I have to say, I can only speak for myself, but there were times where I think I lost my mind. At one point, I pulled up a chair to a sacred datura, it's called a moon flower in some places, and you watch that flower unfurl, and every so often it'll just go poof and go a little further, and then it'll keep turning, and it'll go poof. If your nose happens to be where that poof is, you receive this powerful aroma. And I didn't realize how hallucinatory it was. And I hope I never hear the letter that I sent to Bianca, where I think that I was absolutely under the spell of sacred datura.

[MUSIC: David and Steve Gordon with Sequoia Artists, First Chakra Muladhara]

CURWOOD: We’re speaking with nature writer Terry Tempest Williams about her 2026 book The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. We’ll be right back after the break. Keep listening to Living on Earth!

ANNOUNCER: Support for Living on Earth comes from the estate of Rosamund Stone Zander - celebrated painter, environmentalist, and author of The Art of Possibility – who inspired others to see the profound interconnectedness of all living things, and to act with courage and creativity on behalf of our planet. Support also comes from Sailors for the Sea and Oceana. Helping boaters race clean, sail green and protect the seas they love. More information @sailorsforthesea.org.

[CUTAWAY MUSIC: Dieter Huber, “Leben” single, Chill Pal]

CURWOOD: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Steve Curwood.

DOERING: And I’m Jenni Doering.

Let’s get back to our conversation with author Terry Tempest Williams, writer in residence at Harvard Divinity School, whose 2026 book is The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

CURWOOD: One of the things that, as you were mentioning, that walking outside at night, you're so lucky and careful both where you live, because you have a truly dark sky out there in, in the desert, you mentioned that your friend in Vermont was sort of imagining the Milky Way, but when you're, when you're out there, I've spent a little time out there, like near Capitol Reef, and such, you have a really dark sky, it's so beautiful, huh?

WILLIAMS: We qualify as one of the 52 dark sky communities around the world, and that is a commitment. And we have a community that is very diverse in terms of ideologies. This is the one thing we agree on: a night sky of stars. And we don't have street lights; we have dirt roads, and all of us turn off our lights at night, and it is really a gift. What I didn't realize is that much of the Colorado Plateau, particularly in southeastern Utah, is one of the largest conglomerates of dark skies in the world, and I think if anyone wants to really experience that, you know, go to natural bridges, you can hardly see your hand in front of you.

CURWOOD: So, speaking of the desert, there's a couple of lines in your book that prompt this question. At one point, you say it's a choice to live in the outback of rural Utah, where you understand your neighbor, who says, "If you're not my friend, you're my target" and means it, right? Other words, "if you're not sitting at the table, you're on the menu," right? But you live there anyway, because confronting differences and accepting them means you expand with the territory, regardless of the species, regardless of the political persuasion. You can appreciate dark skies, and then you quote Albert Camus, you say "the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion". And then you write, "I like living near roosters who mark the morning of sunrise each day, we love, we live by the clock of crowing, that is our rebellion".

WILLIAMS: I do love living here, and I love my neighbors, and we've lived here now 30 years, and our differences seem less than when we first moved here, and I think that has to do with fire and flood and heat. We need each other. You don't have the luxury of not getting along. Our neighbors, the Williams, devout Mormons, they have a beautiful garden. And when we had those five flash floods in 2024, we relied on each other. I'm not sure what I gave them. I know they brought me beats. I think we were together, and I could watch clouds, and we alerted each other, and also another neighbor, very close, they are devout MAGA supporters. That disappears when you're all in danger of losing your homes, and for a good week we couldn't get out, the road was a river, and you rely on each other, and every time we see each other, that bond deepens. I remember we had a dinner party for some new neighbors that moved in where our other neighbors left right after these flash floods, and we wanted to welcome them and to let them know who the neighbors are, so that again we can create those bonds so that they're tight when necessary. It was so moving. We had Mormons around the table, we had Trump supporters around the table, we had government workers, we had a flint napper, we had radical environmentalists that made me look like Nancy Reagan.

Everyone was there. I was nervous. My partner, husband Brooke was nervous, and when they came in, I had a basket of stone hearts I had collected through the years, and when each person came in, they took a heart. We sat down in the living room, and we talked about, for our neighbors' sake, one thing that we loved about Castle Valley: it took an hour. It was a night sky of stars, it was coyotes howling. It was solitude, it was sage. And by the time we got to the table, we were in a state of tenderness, and origin stories began how we came to this valley, where we came from, and then it was Richard Williams, the patriarch in the Mormon Church, who said, I have a question for the table, where does the water want to go? And suddenly everything shifted, the table was cleared, maps came out, each person brought their expertise, and what evolved in that evening of very different-minded people was, what if we held an event for the community? We have about 250 people that live here, called Walking the Path of Water. And that's what we organized together, and we found where the old creek went, we saw where the flood came, and we put posters up. We thought maybe we'll get 12 people. Close to 60 or 70 came, and for three hours we walked that path of water and talked to each other and learned from each other. We had a hydrologist amongst us, we had a geologist amongst us, and it took us three hours. It was rigorous, and when we got to the town square, so to speak, we had a potluck, and nobody wanted to leave. And these are the kinds of things that I think bring us together and remind us what we share rather than what tears us apart.

DOERING: That's such a different way of looking at the world, too. Asking where the water wants to go, as opposed to, you know, prescribing where we want it to go.

WILLIAMS: That's right and so this community is growing together as we face climate change, as we face floods, as we face this 2500 year mega drought.

CURWOOD: So you're married to a man with the name Williams. You said the patriarch of the Mormon Church in that area is a Williams. Your family, I have the impression, came out to the Great Salt Lake. Your ancestors came out to this area, the Great Salt Lake, which I guess these days a little bit less of it seems to be less and less of the Great Salt Lake, and talk to us about the bison herd that's on what's now become a peninsula there at the Great Salt Lake, and for that matter, say more about what's important about this lake.

WILLIAMS: Well, Great Salt Lake right now is, I want to say a puddle by its own standards, and I've lived long enough to have seen it at its highest elevation, when it was the fullest, when it was flooding at 4,211.85 and now it's around 4,198 I think, or less. 4,188 is the lowest in 2023 It's probably 4,189 or 90. I didn't check recently, but there's a thousand square miles exposed. It's hard to imagine Grace Salt Lake is enormous. It's a remnant of Lake Bonneville, and it's a Pleistocene. It's a remnant of a Pleistocene lake, and we're worried those exposed playas now are laced with arsenic and cadmium and all sorts of toxins that, as these dust devils whip up, they are going right across the Wasatch Front, Salt Lake City with 2.5 million people. So we're in an environmental crisis. The bison remains steady on Antelope Island, and I'm smiling because I love them. I think they remind us about survival, I think they remind us about resiliency, I think they remind us about community, how they take care of each other, how they put the young bison in the center if there's danger, how they maneuver their bodies through deep, deep snow and survive. I can tell you a story.

DOERING: Yes

WILLIAMS: I love this

CURWOOD: Please do.

WILLIAMS: When we had this, when we had the students on Great Salt Lake, that's where we were staying for those days. We had one of the, we called them one of the czars of Great Salt Lake, one of the public servants that was charged with figuring out how do we bring water to Great Salt Lake, so that it can literally survive. And we had the Deputy Czar of Great Salt Lake there. We had our chairs outside around the fire, it was cold. It was morning. There was snow, and this was late March. And one of the students asked the deputy, "How do you feel about the Endangered Species Act?" because we were about to petition the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect the Wilson's phalarope, it's a small little shorebird that spins and creates a column of brine shrimp that then it can survive and eat. And he said "The endangered species has never saved a species", and right then we heard this rumbling, and we felt the ground moving beneath our feet. We all stood up, and there on the horizon were 600 bison stampeding our direction, and even the deputy said, "I stand corrected", and the irony was not lost on him. But it's that kind of magic that I think occurs when we are present, and I think when we are present we know what to do. When we are present we can say "I stand corrected," because we were met with another presence greater than our own, the Glorians, in this instance, 600 bison on Antelope Island in a retreating Great Salt Lake.

CURWOOD: Well how fair is it to say that you find glorians everywhere, or that we can find them everywhere?

WILLIAMS: I think they are everywhere, if we are present, if we slow down enough to see, if we favor our senses, and if we recognize the yearning that we have for other, other people, other species, moments of grief, and moments of compassion, the full range, I think, is there for us. This is a book where I didn't hold back, because I think we're in a time where we cannot afford to. This is a book where I took risks that in other books I have not, because I think that's what this moment warrants. You know, I talk about a global prayer that was offered, and I remember calling Jonah Yellowman, who is a medicine person in Monument Valley, Dine, Navajo, and I said, Jonah, do you want to join me? There is this global prayer that's happening, and he said yes, and it happened at 11 o'clock on a Sunday. As I was walking out where I say my prayers on our porch, I faced South Round Mountain, which is an igneous volcanic plug, and I had just, I think, for comfort and solidarity with my grandmother, whom I love, who taught me about dreams, I held this amethyst crystal in my hand as the prayer was internal. You know, it was just that people would stand in prayer around the world at this moment for those in the pandemic, and those who had this virus. All of a sudden my eyes were closed. I felt this fire burning inside Round Mountain, and in my mind's eye, I could see a small flame coming toward me. And would you believe me if I told you it entered my heart, and all of a sudden my entire body felt like it was on fire, my hands were so hot that I opened my eyes and I opened my hand where my grandmother's hand stone, that's what she called it, I could see where that crystal had been burned. Now that is not a story I would normally tell, except for to those closest to me, that is a story that normally I never would have written, but I trust that now, because I think we are evolving as a species to where we realize these issues that are so confounding, and that we are confronting, be it climate, be it ice in our neighborhoods, or be it a pandemic, fire, or floods, we do have the capacity to create a new way of being, to create a new way of seeing, and to me this collective evolution that we are seeing of consciousness is also a glorian. It is a moment where our focus, our collective focus, can change everything. And I'm not talking about hope, I think there's something deeper than hope, and for me that is engagement, again, being present wherever we call home, then we will know what to do.

[SFX: BIRD CALL Randolph Little; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library]

DOERING: And this is the call of that spinning bird of salt lakes, the Wilson’s Phalarope.

[SFX: BIRD CALL Randolph Little; Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library]

CURWOOD: Terry, it’s amazing how you always bring us to the nature around us.

DOERING: It’s true, going back to the environmental classic Refuge, and
in this wonderful 2026 book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.

CURWOOD: Terry Tempest Williams, it’s been so great to sit with you and celebrate nature in this world. Thank you.

WILLIAMS: Jenni, Steve, I cannot thank you enough, and to your listeners: we are all in this together. Thank you.

Related links:
- Find out more about Terry Tempest Williams
- Purchase your copy of The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary by Terry Tempest Williams and support Living on Earth and independent booksellers

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[MUSIC: David and Steve Gordon with Sequoia Artists, First Chakra Muladhara]

CURWOOD: Living on Earth is produced by the World Media Foundation. Our crew includes Naomi Arenberg, Paloma Beltran, Abby Edgecumbe, Swayam Gagneja, Mark Kausch, Mark Seth Lender, Don Lyman, Ashanti Mclean, Aynsley O’Neill, Sophia Pandelidis, Jake Rego, Andrew Skerritt, Bella Smith, and El Wilson. We bid a fond farewell to spring intern Julia Vaz this week – we’ll miss you!

DOERING: Tom Tiger engineered our show. Alison Lirish Dean composed our themes.
Thanks this week to the Macaulay Library from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. You can hear us anytime at L-O-E dot org, Apple Podcasts and YouTube Music, and like us please, on our Facebook page, Living on Earth. Find us on Instagram, Threads and BlueSky at Living on Earth Radio. And we always welcome your feedback at comments at loe.org. I’m Jenni Doering.

CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood. Thanks for listening!

ANNOUNCER: Funding for Living on Earth comes from you, our listeners, and from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in association with its School for the Environment, developing the next generation of environmental leaders. And from the Grantham Foundation for the protection of the environment, supporting strategic communications and collaboration in solving the world’s most pressing environmental problems.

ANNOUNCER 2: PRX.