Climate Change and People with Disability: Avoiding Catastrophe

Abstract

Mary Jo Iozzio

Alarms about climate change can be found in many daily and weekly news outlets. Many of these alarms raise concerns, rightly, about certain catastrophe to people, the flora and fauna of land, sea, and air, and all of Earth’s ecosystems. Some reports in mainstream media include accounts of the vulnerabilities among people in low-lying coastal communities and other precarious environments with increasingly limited access to water, threats from erratic weather events, to hurricanes, drought, wildfires, extreme heat, sink holes, and volcanic eruptions.

Climate catastrophe will affect the most vulnerable people hardest and first with loss of life, greater poverty, food and potable water insecurity, infrastructure collapse, and displacement. This essay explores the challenges of climate-related catastrophes and mitigations efforts by the United Nations, Disability Activists, and Catholic Social Teaching initiatives in reference to Persons with Disability by arguing for the need to consider the threats of catastrophe to vulnerable populations first.

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