Disaster by degrees: the implications of the IPCC 1.5 degree report for disaster law

Climate change is the ultimate disaster. It is hard to imagine a more profound systematic and disruptive change of human suffering, mass displacement and environmental damage than anthropocentric climate change. The combination of more intense and frequent extreme weather events and slow onset climate disasters, such as reduced precipitation and sea level rise, threatens to exceed the coping capacity of affected communities and disrupt fundamental societal functions. In 2018 alone, 218 extreme weather events affected 61.7 million people worldwide. 23 million people were affected by floods in Kerala, India; 9.3 million people experienced drought. The United States experienced its costliest and deadliest wildfire in over a century.