When Australia suffered a drought in the 2000s, it set up markets to trade water rights. NPR's Linda Wertheimer asks McKenzie Funk whether water markets could help California.
China and India are each spending billions of dollars on infrastructure, especially hydroelectric dams, in Nepal. Steve Inskeep talks to journalist Donatella Lorch about what China and India want.
During its last major drought, Santa Barbara built a desalination plant. It was never used. Now it's being reopened, but critics say desalination is costly, energy-intensive and may harm marine life.
While lower oil and natural gas prices are great for the wallet, they've led to layoffs. NPR visits Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale region, which is still seeing growth in high-paying natural gas jobs.
Each year, millions of pounds of Mexican produce are rejected just past the border even though it's tasty and edible. Instead of the landfill, it's now going to needy families across the U.S.
Russian gas is expensive, so many Poles still rely on coal. Krakow is one of the most polluted cities in the EU's most polluted country. All that coal is akin to "smoking 2,000 cigarettes per year."
The northern long-eared bat has been designated as a threatened species, triggering new regulations to protect it. But oil and gas and agriculture organizations say those new rules will hurt them.
State regulators will begin enforcing the new restrictions on a sliding scale. That means that some cities that have been slacking in water conservation will have to do a lot more than others.