This is an existential crisis for disabled people, says campaigner after climate change court win

A disabled campaigner who has helped secure a significant legal victory in the fight against climate change has warned that the government’s failure to take the necessary urgent action will put the lives of countless disabled people at risk.

Doug Paulley (pictured) is one of two individual claimants who have joined Friends of the Earth in seeking a judicial review of the government’s plan to protect the country from the impacts of climate change.

Last week, a high court judge ruled that there should be a two-day hearing in June into their concerns about the government’s latest National Adaptation Programme, which was published in July 2023.

The judge, Mr Justice Sheldon, said the issues raised by the claimants were “of considerable public importance”.

The other individual claimant is Kevin Jordan, who was made homeless shortly before last Christmas, when his house in Hemsby, Norfolk, was demolished after coastal erosion put it in severe danger of falling into the sea.

Last month, the statutory Climate Change Committee, which advises the UK and devolved governments, said the latest adaptation plan “falls far short of what is required” and that evidence of the UK’s “inadequate response to worsening climate impacts continues to mount”.

The claimants’ case has been boosted by a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights last week that Switzerland’s inadequate efforts to tackle climate change had breached the rights of a group of older women who cannot leave their homes and experience significant negative impacts on their health during heatwaves.

Paulley is better known as a disability rights campaigner, particularly around accessible transport issues, but he told Disability News Service this week that he was an environmental campaigner before he became a disability rights activist.

He has a degree in geophysics, comes from a family of scientists, and previously worked for the Environment Agency, and was involved in the first Climate Camp outside the Drax coal-fired power station in north Yorkshire in 2006.

It was while studying for his degree that it became “massively apparent” to him that human activity was responsible for significant global warming, and the devastation it was causing.

In highlighting the disproportionate impact on disabled people of climate change, he points to the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in August 2005, when there were “care homes, nursing homes, where the residents had just been left abandoned to die, and their stinking corpses were pulled out days later”.

Other care home staff “were just utterly overwhelmed at trying to keep their people vaguely safe and healthy and alive. It was devastating.”

But he also highlights the impact of the Covid pandemic on disabled people, who were reliant for survival on care staff putting their lives at risk, while do not resuscitate orders were imposed on some disabled people in parts of the NHS, and people were discharged into care homes from hospital without being tested.

He said: “It just becomes immediately apparent that disabled people are among the minorities that are considered the most expendable in any form of significant catastrophe or emergency. And climate change is an emergency.

“Everybody’s reliant on society for their existence, but you’re made more vulnerable and more reliant on support and assistance if you’re disabled.”

Publicity around his role in the case has so far focused on the fact that extreme summer heat has a significant impact on him because of long-term health conditions that make him susceptible to over-heating, causing him distress and discomfort, but also putting him at increased risk of serious harm.

He said this was true, but he added: “My significant major concern is more that this is a global climate emergency that is causing people to suffer and die now.

“And it is always those who have got the least resources to deal with such who suffer the most, and disabled people are always among the first against the wall.”

It is, he said, an “existential crisis for humanity”, but “particularly an existential crisis for the most dispossessed and disempowered and under-resourced groups, which will include disabled people, both in this country and around the world.

“People with very little resources in Bangladesh or the low-lying areas will suffer and die.

“Disabled people will, too, and disproportionately; it’s been proven that we always do.”

After 14 years of austerity forced on the country by Conservative-led governments, he said his response to the “totally disgraceful” National Adaptation Programme was “a kind of weary knackeredness and unsurprise about their continuing lack of care or action on climate”.

Paulley said there was a clear danger to the lives of disabled people in the UK if the government continued to refuse to take the necessary action and strengthen the plan.

He said: “It’s already happening around the world. I have no doubt whatsoever.

“There are people who are suffering and dying because of climate change now.”

Rowan Smith, from solicitors Leigh Day, which is representing the claimants, said: “Our clients have joined forces to bring this legal claim, because the adverse impacts of climate change are being felt right now, yet they believe the government’s plans to deal with those impacts are woefully inadequate.

“Our clients believe that the government’s adaptation programme leaves the UK unprepared to meet the environmental challenges it is already facing as a result of climate change, in breach of clear legal requirements under both the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Climate Change Act 2008.”

Friends of the Earth campaigner Alison Dilworth said: “We’re delighted the high court has agreed to hear this crucial legal challenge.

“The government’s adaptation programme – which should be a plan to protect us all from the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis – is completely inadequate and puts people’s lives at risk.

“We know the most marginalised communities, including disabled people, are most at risk and largely excluded from planning and preparedness work.

​“We hope our legal challenge will lead to a robust new plan that helps safeguard people, property and infrastructure from the consequences of a rapidly warming planet.”

In response to the court’s decision, a government spokesperson said: “Our third National Adaptation Programme sets out a robust five-year plan to strengthen infrastructure, promote a greener economy, and safeguard food production in the face of the climate challenges we face.

“We are investing billions to improve the UK’s climate resilience, including £5.6 billion in flood and coastal schemes, safeguarding future water supplies by accelerating £2.2 billion of investment and driving tree planting and peat restoration through the £750 million Nature for Climate Fund.

“We are unable to comment further whilst legal proceedings are ongoing.”

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…