As California struggles to recover from the deadly fires that consumed our City of Angels, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the most vulnerable citizens are at the most risk of dying during a climate disaster. The stories that have emerged during this crisis are hard to bear witness to — one mother was reportedly forced to leave her disabled son to die because she wasn’t able to evacuate him.

And our current political climate is fraught; conservatives don’t appear to think that disabled people need to have access to necessary survival strategies. These horrors underscore the inextricable link between climate catastrophe and disability justice.

Many assume the correlation here is accidental even if unfortunate, but in truth, it’s a result of policy failures, inaccessible infrastructure and systemic ableism. Disabled people were also disproportionately affected by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and disabled people in Asheville, North Carolina, were unable to get necessary goods after Hurricane Helene.

“If disability is not considered in climate action, the consequence is simple: People die. And they die not because of their impairments, but because society fails to accommodate them in disaster planning, response and recovery,” says Sébastien Jodoin, a law professor at McGill University, and director and co-founder of DICARP, Disability-Inclusive Climate Action Research Programme.

In the cases of both Katrina and the recent fires in California for example, lack of accessible evacuation plans, shelters and emergency services harmed disabled communities inordinately. “The reason that people with disabilities die in disproportionate ways in something like a hurricane is because of the barriers they face in society more generally, but also because governments haven’t done what they should do to ensure that those citizens are protected in that kind of event,” Jodoin explains.

These kinds of failures are baked into the system, Jodoin explains. According to the CDC, over 70 million Americans reported having a disability in 2022, but policymakers continue to create disaster plans that leave out this giant segment of the population.

“Disabled being left behind is not an accident — it’s a policy choice,” he adds. “The way emergency response is structured assumes that people are mobile, have access to reliable information, and can act independently.”

So, what’s the problem? Are policymakers genuinely callous? Why isn’t the government protecting the lives of all its citizens?

It’s not that simple, Jodoin says. Laws and regulations that would protect disabled people do exist, but they just aren’t prioritized. Laws such as the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities require governments to prioritize disabled people in climate policies.

The ADA specifies that the government has a strict legal obligation to consider how climate change affects people with disabilities, says Jodoin. But, “These very clear legal obligations are being systematically violated all over the world,” he says.

Research backs this up. A report from the DICARP shows that we’ve put in place a lot of important policies that would protect disabled people, but without concrete measures to do so. “We’ve found over and over again that almost invariably, systematically, governments are not living up to those obligations.”

What’s missing is enforcement and political will. “Governments are actively ignoring their responsibilities, and disabled people are paying the price with their lives,” he says. In other words, disabled people are dying because the government refuses to be held to its own dictates. That’s not exactly a shocker given the current regime, but this problem is not new. And it’s a problem that will only get worse if we don’t start prioritizing accessibility, says Jodoin.

Some of us have never even considered disability when thinking about climate change, and that’s understandable. Jodoin tells me he had been working on climate and human rights issues for a decade, but didn’t make the connection until it became personal. “About 10 years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis,” he explains. People with MS are very sensitive to heat, and it was his own increasing vulnerability to climate change that provoked his a-ha moment.

That realization has fueled his mission to make sure that other people start making these connections — and act accordingly. And, Jodoin believes, making life better for disabled people will ultimately benefit all of us.

One solution is taking a more sensible approach to design. When cities invest in universal design, everyone benefits, says Jodoin. In case you don’t know, universal design is the idea that environments, infrastructure and technology should be accessible to all people. Sounds like common sense, right? It is. It could also solve a lot of problems for disabled people. Instead of treating accessibility as an afterthought, universal design integrates accessibility from the start. That doesn’t just serve disabled people, either.

Universal design systems naturally work for a wider range of people. Think about the elevators in the NYC subway system. Those elevators are legally required to account for the needs of wheelchair users, but they benefit everyone from moms juggling multiple strollers to people too drunk to walk down the stairs. ResilienCity Park in Hoboken, New Jersey, a dual-purpose space that serves as both a recreational area and a stormwater capture system, is another example of universal design. In the context of climate justice, universal design could make entire communities more resilient during disasters.

“When you start thinking about universal design, you realize these changes wouldn’t just benefit disabled people. They help seniors, low-income individuals, and even non-disabled people in crisis situations,” says Jodoin. They can also help in non-crisis situations as we all work to increase our climate resilience. Because the truth is that we are all going to have to become more adaptable and less vulnerable to climate change if this little species is going to survive.

“If you’re ensuring that people with disabilities can go to school, find employment, access food, and access housing, then you’re reducing their vulnerability to climate change,” says Jodoin. You can likely surmise that increasing the climate resilience of roughly a quarter of Americans would better all our odds as we face the climate crisis. Or, as Jodoin says, “A more disability-inclusive society is a more climate-resilient society.”