Professor Michael Stein, Executive Director, Harvard Law School Project on Disability

Michael Ashley Stein has spent years making an argument that the climate movement has been slow to hear: that persons with disabilities are among the most exposed to climate disaster and among the least represented in the rooms where climate policy is decided. His research shows that people with disabilities are two to four times more likely to die in climate related disasters than those without, a statistic he has taken to the United Nations, to scientific journals, and to the G7. He co-founded the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and has used it to push disability inclusion into international climate frameworks, arguing that any adaptation plan that does not account for access and mobility is incomplete by design.