Green In The Media 27th July - 2nd August

This week's Book At Bedtime looks interesting, The Rapture by Liz Jensen. Most reviewers on Amazon give it four or five stars

Monday 27th July

Serious Ocean
On: BBC 2
Time: 10:35 to 11:05 (Every day this week)
Series in which eight young adventurers go to extremes to help the planet. The Ocean Eight take part in their final marine project, helping scientists dart dolphins to take flesh samples. They then sail to the world's most southerly glacier outside Antarctica, which they survey for the first time to check on global warming. Climbing onto the huge glacier and leaping over dangerous crevasses is a terrifying experience for some of the adventurers.

Open Gardens
On: BBC 2
Time: 12:00 to 12:30
Nant Y Bedd and Jeffcot Road.
Series which follows people's attempts to have their gardens accepted into the National Gardens Scheme. Ian and Sue Mabberly live in the Welsh mountains and are passionate about sustainable organic gardening, but will the steep site prove too much of a health and safety nightmare for the NGS?

Who Killed the Honey Bee?
On: BBC 4
Time: 19:30 to 20:30
With an affliction dubbed colony collapse disorder wiping out bees worldwide, Martha Kearney explores the terrifying implications of their possible extinction and the loss of their most vital service to nature, pollination, without which global food production would collapse. The threat to keepers, farmers and our food supply is acute and growing, and yet the cause of this 'Marie Celeste syndrome' that causes bees to flee their hives remains a mystery.

Book at Bedtime
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 22:45 to 23:00 (Every night this week)
The Rapture
Denise Black reads from Liz Jensen's eco-thriller. In a merciless summer of biblical heat and destructive winds, Gabrielle Fox's main concern is a personal one: to rebuild her career as a psychologist after a shattering car accident. But when she is assigned Bethany Krall, one of the most dangerous teenagers in the country, she begins to fear she has made a terrible mistake. Raised on a diet of evangelistic hellfire, Bethany is violent, delusional, cruelly intuitive and insistent that she can foresee natural disasters - a claim which Gabrielle interprets as a symptom of doomsday delusion. But when catastrophes begin to occur on the very dates Bethany has predicted, and a brilliant, gentle physicist enters the equation, the apocalyptic puzzle intensifies and the stakes multiply. Is the self-proclaimed Nostradamus of the psych ward the ultimate manipulator, or could she be the harbinger of imminent global cataclysm on a scale never seen before? And what can love mean in 'interesting times'? A haunting story of human passion and burning faith set against an adventure of tectonic proportions, The Rapture is an electrifying psychological thriller that explores the dark extremes of mankind's self-destruction in a world on the brink.

Tuesday 28th July

The Ellen DeGeneres Show
On: FIVER
Time: 06:00 to 06:45
Ellen goes green for her latest show, dishing out environmentally-friendly delights for her audience.

Home Planet
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:00 to 15:30
Richard Daniel and the team discuss listeners' questions about the world we inhabit and our interaction with it, from astronomy to geology, biology to environmental science.

Wednesday 29th July

In Living Memory
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 11:00 to 11:30
Contemporary history series. Chris Ledgard tells the story of the battle to extract Dorset's oil, after geologists discovered the biggest offshore oilfield in western Europe there in the late 1970s. The oilmen were faced with the dilemma of how to open up a major oilfield around the Isle of Purbeck and Poole Harbour, one of the most important and protected stretches of landscape in the British Isles. But BP was determined to do so and, after a long battle to persuade people that it could drill for oil without destroying the environment, its plans were passed.

Thursday 30th July

One Planet
On: BBC World Service Radio
Time: 10:32 to 11:00 (Also 1630, 2030, 0130)
One Planet looks at how we use our planet.

Open Country
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 15:02 to 15:27
Helen Mark reports on new peace proposals to resolve the long-running battle between fishermen and conservationists over the wildlife-rich waters of the Firth of Lorne on the west coast of Scotland. She joins local wildlife biologist Tessa McGregor for a boat trip around the Firth, meeting fishermen, farmers and naturalists, all of whom are anxious to reach a balance that preserves livelihoods without further threatening this precarious natural environment. Scallop dredging is currently banned in the Firth, much to the displeasure of local fishermen who have to sail further and into more dangerous waters to bring home a profitable catch. The Scottish government looks set to reverse the ban, but local divers tell Helen that such a move would devastate the sea bed and the aquatic life that depends on it.

Sunday 2nd August

Country Tracks
On: BBC 1
Time: 11:00 to 12:00
Peak District Industry.
Ben Fogle goes on a journey through the Peak District in search of the area's industrial heritage. Starting at Bugsworth Basin, one of Britain's few remaining canal interchanges, he travels on to Kinder Scout, scene of the famous 1932 mass trespass. He cycles over the remains of Tin Town, a village built for the navvies constructing the Derwent and Howden reservoirs, tries his hand as a shepherd, and meets the eco-protesters who successfully campaigned to save ancient woodland from a quarry.

The Estuary
On: BBC Radio Four
Time: 14:45 to 15:00
Peter France narrates an extraordinary story of life on the Wash as the tides and the seasons change, set against a backdrop of sounds recorded on location by Chris Watson. How might climate change and rising sea levels affect this wild, desolate and beautiful landscape?


Excerpts taken from DigiGuide - the world's best TV guide available from http://www.getdigiguide.com/?p=1&r=20818
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