Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Mary Nichols is not a household name, but she arguably has done more than any other public official to reduce America's carbon pollution. As she puts it, “I took on the one topic that everybody agreed was really important, but they didn't know what to do about, and that was air pollution,” Nichols first served as chair of California's Air Resources Board, or the Air Board, from 1979 to 1983 in Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown's first term. When she returned to the job, almost 25 years later under a Republican governor, the board had evolved into a much more powerful and important player, in what had become an urgent struggle against climate change. The Board played a crucial role, for example, in exposing the Volkswagen “Dieselgate” scandal. “The Air Resources Board and our engineers are the ones who uncovered the fraud and figured out how it actually worked,” she recalls, “and we immediately brought in the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and in turn, the Department of Justice.” More recently, Nichols has