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Vivian Thomson

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Vivian Thomson is Professor in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Politics at University of Virginia as well as the Founder and Director of the interdisciplinary Environmental Thought and Practice BA Program and the Panama Initiative. Thomson is an environmental policy expert with over 25 years of practical and academic experience at local, state, national, and international levels.

Before joining the faculty at the University of Virginia,Thomson was a senior air pollution analyst and manager at the United States Environmental Protection Agency in both San Francisco and Washington D.C. At EPA, Thomson advised top political appointees on Clean Air polities, conducted briefings, crafted legislative language, analyzed congressional proposals, reviewed state plans, developed regulations, and represented the Assistant Administrator on RCRA, SDWA, CWA, and FIFRA actions. From 2005 to 2006, she was a Guest Scholar at the Pew Center of Global Climate Change. She has also been a consultant on energy and environmental issues. Appointed by Governor Mark Warner in 2002, Thomson served as Vice Chair and member of the State Air Pollution Control Board, a seven-member regulatory body that makes air pollution policy and approves regulations for Virginia. She was reappointed by Governor Tim Kaine and served on the Board until 2010.

At UVA Thomson teaches environmental policy and seminar classes, including a survey course that introduces 150 undergraduates to a broad range of domestic and international environmental issues. In 2001, Thomson co-founded the Environmental Thought and Practice Program, a selective interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree program with 25 to 30 undergraduate majors. Thomson has directed UVA's Panama Initiative, a collaborative research and teaching program that spans a variety of disciplines. From 2001 to 2002, Thomson was a Distinguished Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark.

Thomson is the author of three books, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Solving the Problems with Long-Distance Trash Transport,'' which was a finalist in the 2010 Southern Environmental Law Center's Phillip D. Reed Writing Competition. The book explores the growing phenomenon of long-distance trash transport and related trash management issues and compares waste generation and consumption patterns in the U.S. with those in the European Union and Japan. Thomson's most recent book is Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy: Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany (Anthem Press, 2014)[1]. Thomson proposes an innovative climate policy framework called “sophisticated interdependence. This model is based on her lucid analysis of economic and political forces affecting climate change policy in selected US states, as well as on comparative descriptions of programs in Germany and Brazil, two powerful federal democracies whose policies are critical in the global climate change arena.Thomson has also written articles and extended reports on: law, politics, botany, air pollution, atmospheric science, and ethics.

Thomson's third book, forthcoming in April 2017 (MIT Press), is Climate of Capitulation: An Insider's Account of State Power in a Coal Nation. Strong state-level political will and institutional capacity, especially in the forty states that produce or consume coal, are critical to the US's success in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation. However, entrenched state-level cultural, institutional, and economic forces threaten the viability of those efforts. This first-person decision-maker's account shows how power is wielded at the state level in air pollution policymaking and reveals a "climate of capitulation," that is, a deeply rooted tendency by politicians and high-level civil servants to capitulate to electric utility and coal interests.

Thomson is a graduate of Princeton University, where she received her BA in Biology. She received her MA in Biology (Ecology) at University of California, Santa Barbara and her Ph.D. in Government at University of Virginia. She lives in Charlottesville and Washington D.C. with her husband, Pat Roach. She has two daughters, Amelia (Princeton '11) and Flora (Princeton '13).

References

Vivian Thomson Wikipedia