Flanigan's Eco-Logic Ted Flanigan

In this Convo of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Professor Michael Gerrard from Columbia University. He is the founder and faculty director of the groundbreaking Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, and one of the foremost environmental lawyers in the nation. Michael is an advocate, litigator, teacher, and scholar who has pioneered cutting-edge legal tools and strategies for addressing climate change. He writes and teaches courses on environmental law, climate change law, and energy regulation. He was the chair of the faculty of Columbia University’s renowned Earth Institute from 2015 to 2018 and now holds a joint appointment to the faculty of its successor, the Columbia Climate School.

He and Ted discuss his background, growing up in Charleston, West Virginia in an immensely polluted area, which led to his interest in studying and protecting the environment. He moved to New York City to attend Columbia University, and has been there ever since. He started his career in journalism, later deciding to become an environmental lawyer, and then shifted to writing books and entered the world of academia. 

Before joining the Columbia Law School faculty in 2009, Michael practiced law in New York for three decades, most recently as the partner in charge of the New York office of Arnold & Porter. As an environmental lawyer, he tried numerous cases and argued many appeals in federal and state courts and administrative tribunals. He also handled the environmental aspects of diverse transactions and development projects and provided regulatory compliance advice to an array of clients in the private and public sectors. Several publications rated him the leading environmental lawyer in New York and one of the leaders in the world.
He has also written or edited 14 books, including Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, the first and leading work in its field (co-edited with Jody Freeman and Michael Burger), and Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (co-edited with John Dernbach). His 12-volume Environmental Law Practice Guide and four-volume Brownfields Law and Practice each received the Association of American Publishers’ Best Law Book of the Year award.
He highlights some of his most impressionable career cases, and shares that he is currently leading a legal effort to sue the Governor for New York, Kathy Hochul, for indefinitely pausing the rollout of congestion pricing in New York City. He also shares with Ted his work with the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on the legal issues caused by rising sea levels that threaten the island nation.

In this Convo of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Mary Nichols, who served as the chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for a total of 18 years. She has served on the Board under Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. (1975–82 and 2010–18), Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (2007–2010) and Governor Gavin Newsom (2019–2020). She also served as California’s Secretary for Natural Resources (1999–2003), appointed by Gov. Gray Davis. Mary is widely recognized for a career as one of the world’s most important environmental regulators. Over a career as an environmental lawyer spanning over 45 years, she has played a key role in California and the nation’s progress toward healthy air. 

She and Ted discuss her background, discussing the late 60s and early 70s in Ithaca, New York. She majored in Russian Literature, received her B.A. from Cornell University (1966), worked in journalism at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) straight out of university, then attended law school, receiving her J.D. from Yale Law School (1971), devoting her career to fighting air pollution from then on. She shares that her interest in the environment came about as a result of having been involved in the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements, believing in the need for activism at the community level. 

After law school, she worked as an attorney for the Center for Law in the Public Interest in Los Angeles (1971-74) where she brought the first litigation under the then recently passed Clean Air Act. From 1993-1997, Nichols served as Assistant Administrator of Air and Radiation for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton. Her efforts there led to the first federal air quality standard regulating potentially deadly fine-particle pollution and the acid rain trading program.

Nichols brings a large area of expertise drawing from her many other positions. She served as the California Secretary for the Natural Resources Agency from 1997-2003, as Executive Director of Environment Now Foundation; founder of the Los Angeles Office of Natural Resources Defense Council; Professor and Director at UCLA Institute of Environment; and co-founder of the first environmental justice working group, a multi-ethnic forum for leaders from traditional environmental and community-based organizations to address issues of environmental equity.

During her leadership at the CARB, California became a national leader at developing clean energy and clean transportation solutions that many other states and nations have adopted. She shares with Ted that her current climate-related work is focused in China, travelling there twice a year in her capacity as a member of the board of The Energy Foundation.

In this follow up Convo of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Steve Lewis, Urban Design Principal with the Portland-based firm, ZGF Architects. Steve was also a candidate for the 2026 President at the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He is a facilitator of partnerships and alliances between groups and individuals who seek to use architecture and design to effect positive change to our world.
Steve brings to ZGF a wealth of experience across urban planning and design, most notably holding a post with the City of Detroit where he served as the Design Director for the Central Region of Detroit’s Department of Planning and Development as well as holding a Professorship in Practice, leading design studios focusing on community issues and urban planning at the University of Michigan. He was a founding partner of the firm RAW International in Los Angeles where he helped build a successful design practice over a 20-year period and collaborated with ZGF on memorable projects including the Exposition Park Master Plan and the California Science Center that made a real difference in the fabric of their communities.
From Southern California to Detroit and back, Steve's ethics-driven urban planning and design has made the cities he’s worked in not only more aesthetically beautiful, but also more equitable and representative of the surrounding communities. Following in the footsteps of his father, an architect with a drive for justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, Steve designs, speaks, mentors, and volunteers tirelessly to advocate for what he believes in and to see those values embodied in the built environment. 
He and Ted discuss his AIA Presidential candidacy and campaign experience, the elements of sustainable design, digging into embedded materials, energy use, building decarbonization, and electrification. Steve concludes that he is dedicated to equity in design to affect positive change for the future of architecture. 

In EcoNet News, Volume 26, Issue #6, Ted shares his highlights from his trip to San Francisco to cheer on Matlock, daughter Kristin’s boyfriend who was competing in the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. He also highlights that renewables provided more than 30% of all U.S. electrical generation in the month of April, a German research team testing new module concepts, integrating solar into sound walls along busy highways and railways, integrating Energy Vault's gravity energy storage (GES) into skyscrapers, Kit Carson Electric Cooperative in northern New Mexico's clean and green position, AI's energy intensity, the quest for climate-friendly food, and Lufthansa's environmental cost surcharge.

In this Convo of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Sean Neman, Founder and CEO of Cal Solar Inc. Cal Solar Inc. proudly delivers reliable, full service renewable energy solutions for new construction, existing buildings, and retrofit projects throughout California. Their experienced in-house team of designers, engineers, and installers is equipped to deliver renewable energy solutions for multifamily, commercial/industrial, and public works projects of any size. To date, they have successfully completed 600+ large-scale renewable energy projects, 200+ prevailing wage projects, and worked within 13 electric utility territories throughout the state. 

Sean has been an entrepreneur and CEO in the renewables and energy efficiency construction space since 2008. Since founding Cal Solar Inc, Sean has executed $150MM in such projects and has led the company through continuous exponential growth, breaking through the barriers to solar in California, proving that rooftop solar is alive and well in Southern California. 
He and Ted discuss Cal Solar Inc.'s diverse portfolio of projects. Cal Solar Inc. is a full-service California engineering, procurement, and construction services company, with well over 200 employees. It has teams of in-house engineers, estimators, and state-wide installation crews. Sean shares his EPC service self-performs everything from initial design and engineering to installation and service. They discuss Cal Solar's installation of what at the time was the tallest Solar Water Heating system in the world, atop the 42nd floor of 399 Fremont Street in San Francisco. They also focus on Panel-Level Energy Storage technology that Cal Solar is deploying. 
Sean concludes by sharing the sentiment with Ted that the "solar coaster" is an interesting one, especially with so many policy changes across the board, but the industry in California is the industry to join. There is still tremendous opportunity and a need to tap this free, renewable resource. 

In EcoNet News, Volume 26, Issue #5, Ted shares his highlights from his trip to the land of enchantment, Sante Fe, New Mexico, to visit his daughter Sierra who is living there. He also highlights the global clothing glut, seaweed clothing, South Korea's solar bike path, streetlight-mounted EV chargers, the first school district in the country in Oakland, CA to have an all-electric school bus fleet, Shenzhen's EV charging network surpassing gas stations, and batteries becoming the largest form of grid-scale storage.