People with disabilities face different and more intense challenges than non-disabled people in the face of events like extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and droughts. But it has taken until relatively recently to recognize this disparity.
Study after study has shown that people with disabilities often live in poverty, have higher rates of unemployment, and are forced to overcome hurdles in accessing health care, emergency information, and other critical services associated with natural disasters.to be unemployed as those without disabilities.
They are also twice as likely to be unemployed than those without disabilities, the Environmental Protection Agency says, which puts them at a disadvantage as the planet heats up.
The EPA cites Hurricane Katrina as a prime example of a climate event in which the disabled community suffered disproportionately. Nearly half of all deaths from the hurricane were people over 75 — while this age group only made up less than 6 percent of the area’s population. More than 10 percent of the deaths due to Katrina were in nursing homes. The EPA directly connects this to the fact that this group had “medical conditions and disabilities that made them vulnerable.
The United Nations estimates that in 2018 alone, more than 28 million people were forced to move because of climate change. And tens of millions of people “are likely to be displaced over the next two to three decades due in large measure to climate change impacts,”
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