‘Being disabled is a radicalising experience’: from eco-ableism to solidarity in climate activism

An overview image of the Sensing Climate mural in Bristol, edited for clarity here as it wraps around an existing mural on the same wall. A full image description can be found online: https://sensing-climate.com/news/sensing-climate-mural-bristol-june-2024. Image credit: Mark Simmons. • Insights from disabled people remain largely overlooked within climate activism. • Using creative research, we foreground the perspectives of disabled people. • Calls for individual change can alienate people and distract from systemic change. • Inclusion in business as usual is no solution to injustice rooted in capitalism. • Movements for justice could be stronger with shared learning, solidarity and care. The urgency of concerns to address the impact of climate change have instigated prominent climate movements in the UK, such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. While the potential exclusion of racialised and working-class communities from such movements has been problematised, disabled people – and the integral expertise within the disabled people’s movement – remain largely overlooked. Drawing on findings from qualitative and arts-based research with disabled people in Bristol, UK, we explore how campaigns promoting pro-environmental behaviour change, reinforce a neoliberal agenda, instilling individual guilt, distracting from the need for systemic change, and further marginalising the perspectives of disabled people. We echo calls by the wider climate justice movement for systemic change, prioritising collective action against the root causes of climate and wider social injustices. Despite often being portrayed as separate issues, the oppression of disabled people and the causes of climate change are largely driven by capitalism. If attention is focused on the symptoms of crisis, disabled people will continue to be framed as among the many unfortunate, but inescapable, victims. If the focus is instead on causal injustice, then the insights and experiences of disabled people become central to building resistance, understanding and struggles for justice. We therefore call for shared learning, solidarity and collaboration between these movements for justice. Such alliances, focused on the urgent need for systemic change, could enable accessible forms of activism, that build strength in numbers; sustain care for self and others; and promote visions of new ways of organising society characterised by solidarity and care.