Critically examining the eugenic and utopian underpinnings of central narrative frameworks in climate change discourse, this chapter argues that our imagination of the future requires different forms of engagement with the past. I interrogate the rhetoric of collapse and look at two primary climate narratives, “the lifeboat” and “the collective,” which engage both eugenic ideologies and utopian imaginaries. Through a reading of Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, the chapter examines how disability theory can disrupt narratives of survival and offer possibilities for thinking through the defamiliarization of place, bodies, and identities under climate disruption. In the final section, I turn to Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016) and Terry Bisson’s Fire on the Mountain (1988). I argue that Whitehead’s and Bisson’s speculative histories are revolutionary acts of memory, reimagining history in ways that shift the trajectories of shared futures.

Chapter 1 explores the various theoretical models of disability that have been delineated by scholars in the field. The chapter traces the evolution from the medical model of disability, which focused on the individual’s impairment, to the social and social-contextual models of disability. The United Nations Convention on the Rights or Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) endorses a social-contextual model of disability, which lays emphasis on the interaction between impairment and environmental, legislative and attitudinal barriers. In addition, the chapter analyses the key features of the human rights model of disability that underpins the CRPD. The chapter also explores the core and cross-cutting themes that have become the cornerstone of current disability law at the international and European levels, and it demonstrates the role of the CRPD as the roadmap of global disability policy.

Chapter 1 explores the various theoretical models of disability that have been delineated by scholars in the field. The chapter traces the evolution from the medical model of disability, which focused on the individual’s impairment, to the social and social-contextual models of disability. The United Nations Convention on the Rights or Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) endorses a social-contextual model of disability, which lays emphasis on the interaction between impairment and environmental, legislative and attitudinal barriers. In addition, the chapter analyses the key features of the human rights model of disability that underpins the CRPD. The chapter also explores the core and cross-cutting themes that have become the cornerstone of current disability law at the international and European levels, and it demonstrates the role of the CRPD as the roadmap of global disability policy.