Climate Change Is Ushering in an “Age of Disability”

As I write this, Los Angeles is ablaze and Accra, Ghana, is recovering from a fire; Richmond, Virginia, lost its potable water to a storm just after Asheville, North Carolina, finally got its supply back two months following Hurricane Helene. These climate disasters are having lasting impacts on, among other things, human health, dependent as it is on the health of our environment—the water we drink, the air we breathe. We are seeing whole populations, human and other, rendered disabled by