Work in a Warming World (W3) is a multi-year research project that clusters together scholars and practitioners from a variety of disciplines to study how climate change will affect work in Canada and abroad. It is spearheaded by my York colleague Carla Lipsig-Mumme. I am one of the Programme Research Members; Professor Stepan Wood (Osgoode) and I are the lawyers on the project.
This Friday and Saturday, W3 is hosting a major international conference at
David Miller is Presenting a Conference Keynote Speech
the University of Toronto. Here is the conference website. On Friday evening, a keynote speech will be presented by the David Miller, the last Mayor of Toronto who did not smoke crack cocaine while in office. David is now CEO & President of the World Wildlife Fund Canada.
The full program is here. There’s still time to register, if you’re interested.
I’ll be speaking on Saturday about a paper I’m working on called: A Law of Just Transitions?: On Horses and Swimming Pools.
The Abstract of my paper: Labour Law (1940s) and Environmental Law (1970s) developed as distinct legal fields in the 20th century by cobbling together all of the legal rules that applied to their respective subject areas. However, both fields are in a period of crisis, searching for a coherence to sustain the fields in the 21st century. This paper explores the possibility of new legal fields emerging that draw on the insights of both Labour Law and Environmental Law, but that are organized around the normative foundation of just transitions. A law of just transitions would retain the guiding principles of labour law (labour is not a commodity) and environmental justice (harms and benefits of climate and land use law should equitably dispersed) while recognizing the need and desirability of decent jobs. Perceiving law and climate change policy through this lens could be a valuable contribution to legal study in an age of global warming.
Maybe I’ll see you there.