Steve Curwood

Steve Curwood Speaker Biography

Steve Curwood is the executive producer and host of NPR's award-winning weekly environmental news program "Living on Earth."

As an African American growing up in a single-mother-led household during the Civil Rights Movement, Curwood had much more on his mind than the environment. "Let the white guys march for the environment," he remembers thinking. By Earth Day 1990 however, when his young son insisted that the environment was the most important issue of the day, Curwood revised his thinking. "Of all the issues Americans marched about in 1970, only the environment has gotten worse. Population has almost doubled since the first Earth Day. Species are going extinct faster and faster. Open space and wilderness are disappearing. Evidence is mounting that pollution not only causes cancer but a host of other disorders, including asthma, heart attacks, immune system breakdowns, reproductive problems, and even criminal behavior," Curwood said on "Living on Earth."

Today "Living on Earth" is aired on more than 300 stations nationwide and is heard in Pacific nations over the Armed Forces Radio Network. It has been awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio and Television News Directors Association, the New York Festivals Award, a CINDY Award, and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters Community Program Awards.

Avoiding partisan lines, Steve Curwood advocates the fact that our relationship to our environment, and what we do to it, is as important as any other part of our lives.