Dean Sheller to deliver the Willis & White Memorial Distinguished Lecture at University of Toronto's School of the Environment "Climate Mobilities and Energy Transitions: Mobility Justice and the Case for Reparations"

Mobility justice offers a way to understand the relationship between the high consumption of fossil fuel in the Global North that is driving greenhouse gas (GHG) levels up and the uneven impacts that are driving climate displacement, especially in the Global South, through various kinds of “climate mobilities”. This talk will argue first that climate-driven displacement is deeply related to mobility injustices. Second, that energy transitions that are premised on renewable energy are further driving “climate colonialism” insofar as extractive industries continue to sacrifice Indigenous land, water and people for the sake of the “global” energy transition. And third, that this leads to a strong case for climate reparations in order to preserve mobile commons and recognize Indigenous “transmotion” (Simpson 2011) by “unsettling mobility” (Lelievre 2017). Countries that have been the largest emitters of GHG cannot simply replace fossil fuel extraction with “green” energy and “sustainable” industry. Deeper transformations must be grounded in principles of mobility justice that challenge the dominant (neo)colonial mobility regimes that created the current environmental crisis. 



To Register: https://www.environment.utoronto.ca/events/willis-and-white-memorial-lecture-2022-dr-mimi-sheller