Law Commons^™

From Smokes To Smokestacks: Lessons From Tobacco For The Future Of Climate Change Liability, Martin Zp Olszynski, Sharon Mascher, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this article, we imagine a future Canada (circa 2030) wherein the world has managed to avoid the worst climate change but nevertheless has begun to experience considerable warming. Governments of all levels, but especially provincial ones, are incurring unprecedented costs to mitigate the effects of climate change and to adapt to new and uncertain climatic regimes. We then consider how legislatures might respond to these challenges. In our view, the answer may lie in the unprecedented story of tobacco liability, and especially the promulgation in the late 1990s of provincial legislation specifically designed to enable provinces to recover the …