With help from others, podcast host Dr. Vivian Thomson analyzes why some environmental problems have been solved and others have not. At the end Season 1, we apply these lessons to the biggest environmental challenge of our time, climate change. The goal is to figure out which policies stand the best chance of being adopted and of working effectively.

In Season 2, which will start in late May to early June 2020, Dr. Thomson and her guests examine how power, freedom, and environmental problems are intertwined and what that means for COVID-19's emergence and spread.

Background and theme music composed by Percy Grainger and Edvard Grieg, recorded by Vivian Thomson. The Meaning of Green is an independent production of Cedar Closet Studios, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Professor Thomson taught environmental policy for 20 years at the University of Virginia, from 1997 to 2017. She retired early so she could devote herself to speaking out in public about environmental issues, which have been her life's work. 

Professor Thomson offers policy insider scoops from her work as an air pollution official at the state and national levels. She has published articles, editorials, and three books, on garbage transport, climate change politics, and how power is wielded in the air pollution policy arena.  In 2018 she and a U. Va. student team published research on who might suffer the most from the Trump Administration's air pollution rollbacks.

For botany buffs: the striking tree above is a 70-year-old fig tree (Ficus drupacea var. pubescens (Roth)) that was one of the first plants landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx added to his incredible tropical preserve in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

Acid rain

Leaded gasoline

Environmental justice

Trash

Endangered species

Renewable energy

Lessons from other countries

Climate change 

Partisanship

Social movements

Nuclear power