Those of you that see me on camera will probably notice my disability; those that meet me in person definitely will. When I was a teenager, I crashed my mountain bike and broke the fifth vertebrae in my neck, which left me paralyzed from the chest down. I get by using accommodations like a power wheelchair, voice dictation software, and a specialized minivan. My disability has given me lots of life lessons, gifted me with a great community, and certainly drilled home the importance of a well-functioning society.
Having a disability is also a huge reason why I do climate-focused work and why I want innovative climate tech to thrive. Above all, climate change disproportionately harms people with disabilities (PWDs) for a mix of medical and social reasons. Those of us with heightened needs for infrastructure and services – including electricity (e.g., for ventilators or wheelchairs), medication, healthcare, caregiving, and public transportation – are especially harmed when natural disasters disrupt them. Many disabilities also increase the risk of heat exhaustion or heatstroke while PWDs’ lower average income means we have less money for air-conditioning. That combination raises huge medical and social issues given increasing extreme heat. Further, climate change is projected to harm economic growth, which in turn will shrink the tax revenues that support vital infrastructure and services we need to survive and thrive. The list of disproportionate impacts goes on…
There are an estimated 1.3 billion PWDs in the world, or around 16% of the global population. If climate change hits PWDs especially hard, then every bit of prevented warming disproportionately helps us. According to Harvard visiting professor of law Michael Ashley Stein, “persons with disabilities are 2 to 4 times more likely to die or be injured in climate emergencies including heat waves, hurricanes, and floods.” Mitigating as many of those emergencies as possible through new, transformative climate tech seems like a disability slam dunk. Limiting other systemic and slow-moving environmental changes is just as important for disability equity.
New climate tech can also improve PWDs’ safety over time. Just take the rapid expansion of battery energy storage in my home state of California (an industry we love to support). Grid-connected batteries have helped stabilize the grid and staved off both power outages and Flex Alert demand response events – a huge help for PWDs with power needs. And when utilities began Proactive Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) to keep lines from sparking wildfires during Red Flag warnings, disability advocates demanded a utility-funded program to support PWDs with related power needs. County-level disability nonprofits used utility grants to develop a full PSPS response program including warehouses of portable 3 kWh batteries that they distribute to PWDs ahead of outages, helping power vital equipment. As the world transforms, more progress around batteries – including innovative new programs and use cases – will clearly help our community.
I love to work in a climate field where technologies mitigate warming and can safeguard PWDs’ well-being. I also know that game-changing products are being developed today. Whether fledgling or fledged, each innovation Climate Hive can help thrive in the market ultimately helps the folks most affected by the climate crisis. We believe that matters. It’s a big reason we do this work.
