Vivian Thomson

Vivian Thomson
Occupation(s)	Podcast producer and semi-retired professor of environmental policy
Academic work
Discipline	Environmental policy and politics

Vivian Thomson is an environmental policy expert who is the producer, creator, and narrator for the podcast The Meaning of Green. From 1997 to 2017 she was a professor in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Politics at the University of Virginia. At U. Va. she was Founder and Director of the interdisciplinary Environmental Thought and Practice BA Program.

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. 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 U. Va. Thomson taught environmental policy lecture and seminar classes. In 2001, Thomson co-founded the Environmental Thought and Practice Program, a selective, rigorous interdisciplinary Bachelor of Arts degree program. Thomson also directed UVA's Panama Initiative, a collaborative research and teaching program that spanned a variety of disciplines. From 2001 to 2002, Thomson was 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. Thomson's second book was Sophisticated Interdependence in Climate Policy: Federalism in the United States, Brazil, and Germany, in which she proposes a climate policy framework called “sophisticated interdependence". This model is based on her analysis of economic and political forces affecting climate change policy. Thomson's third book, published in 2017, is Climate of Capitulation: An Insider's Account of State Power in a Coal Nation. This first-person 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's analysis includes 16 coal states. Climate of Capitulation won a 2018 PROSE award for the "very best in scholarly and professional publishing."

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