In this week's episode, guest host Richard G. Newell talks with Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board and an environmental lawyer with prior experience at the US Environmental Protection Agency and in the California state government. Nichols and Newell discuss what comes next when a new law is "ready to be interpreted" and what it's like for a lawyer to bring some of the first cases under a new statute, regulating environmental health in a cost-effective way, the viability of carbon pricing and market-based policies, and how recognizing that global systemic injustice contributes to pollution is critical to identifying environmental solutions.

This episode continues our month-long spin-off series, “Big Decisions: The Future of US Environmental and Energy Policy.” For this series, which will air in our same Resources Radio time slot every Tuesday in October, RFF President Richard G. Newell and RFF Board of Directors Chair Sue Tierney will share guest-hosting duties; they will talk with leading decisionmakers, analysts, researchers, and reporters about the big decisions that will impact US environmental and energy policy in the years to come.

References and recommendations:

"All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions to the Climate Crisis" edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson; https://www.allwecansave.earth/

Octavia Butler; https://www.octaviabutler.com/work

"Squeeze Me" by Carl Hiaasen; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/558233/squeeze-me-by-carl-hiaasen/