IIPP Labour and Climate Change Lecture Series 2024

Against the background of the accelerating climate crisis, these two public lectures by Damon Silvers, Visiting Professor of Practice and advisor to trade unions in the US and globally, looks at the labour movement’s central role in the fight against climate change in the context of developments since COP27 in Glasgow.  The thesis of the lectures is that fighting climate change requires much more vigorous action by the entrepreneurial state, and that the support of working people, and particularly workers directly involved in the production and use of energy, is critical for the fight against climate change to succeed.  As one labour leader put it, “there will either be a just transition, or no transition at all.”

These lectures build on Professor Silvers’ recent article co-authored with IIPP Director Professor Mariana Mazzucato, 'How to Make the Green Economy a Just Economy', in Foreign Affairs looking at the meaning of the 2023 US auto workers’ strike for the fight against climate change and arguing the need for a new paradigm for how firms, workers and governments interact in the fight against climate change.