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Part 3: The impact of climate change on Puerto Rico – Planned mitigation

Cade Johnson explores the PR Climate Plan’s strategies for sustainability and resilience.

We saw in prior articles of this series how Puerto Rico is on the front line of climate change. The warming air and sea increase our risk from storms, extremes of high and low rainfall, and periods of prolonged high temperature, and are causing the sea level to rise. Experts agree: Humanity’s use of fossil fuels is not sustainable.

Before we go into the details of the PR Climate Plan and the ideas it sets forth, it is important to highlight this word, “sustainable.” When we say something is not sustainable, we are not commenting on whether it should be done, but rather that it cannot continue. This term does not address how the unsustainable practice will end; we still have choices.

We can choose alternative ways that may be as good or even better, we can wait for others to choose for us or we can do nothing and find out what it is like when unsustainable production and energy supplies in the world reach a bitter end and cease.

We have the chance to work out for ourselves how our island is powered and how we live on it — and if we do not work out a sustainable way, then our way of life will simply end at some point in the next decades — food will become unaffordable, infrastructure will deteriorate, the population will flee, and culture will atrophy into mere reminiscence.

The PR Climate Plan describes the impacts of climate change, how they will affect the people of Puerto Rico, and steps needed to protect the citizenry and move toward sustainability in various sectors. Here, briefly, is what the plan says:

Our island-wide electricity has historically been derived from fossil fuel power plants, but efforts by power generators and customers are underway to shift away from fossil fuels and reduce our contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide, and, ambitiously, to eliminate fossil fuel use by 2050. Despite this goal, recent data show the island is still 96% fossil-fuel powered.

For 50 years, there have been various initiatives to improve energy efficiency and approach the idea of sustainability, including energy efficiency and building construction standards, public transportation projects, and educational programs. While there has no doubt been much progress, we remain far from achieving sustainability as an energy-using society.

The PR Climate Plan catalogs a broad range of initiatives in different sectors that could be important to a comprehensive effort for sustainability: maintenance and improvement of government buildings, transportation systems (roads, port facilities, airports and various public transportation projects), solid waste management, public health (emergency services, public health services and disease prevention), agriculture, fresh water supplies, coastal and marine resource management, and preservation of island ecosystems.

Elements such as tourism development, public education and the concept of climate justice (that those most directly affected by climate impacts should be first in line for opportunities to benefit when climate mitigations are implemented), all have been considered as also having contributing roles to a sustainable comprehensive plan.

At the end of the document, these diverse initiatives are reviewed with their respective shortcomings and opportunities for improving sustainability highlighted — 50 pages of well-considered judgments.

If Puerto Rico implemented all of these recommendations, surely, we would have a more sustainable island — though as a casual reader of this massive list, I confess to wonder if such comprehensive preservation of the status quo is even desirable. Could the objectives of the PR Climate Plan be summarized into basic themes? If so, none are explicitly stated. Maybe the implications of climate change are so broad, and our desire to preserve our current lifestyles creates such diverse demands on our leadership and institutions as to defy being condensed into simple statements.

Look at the deep and seriously challenging goals set forth in the PR Climate Plan and think about the desirability and feasibility of doing all those things. Rather than a guiding plan, I think it might be viewed as a working document for us all: a compendium of the many efforts already made by many people and many efforts still left to do, to preserve and improve the many facets of our society — the next steps that would be necessary if we were to continue with those preservation efforts.What we need to do now, collectively, is think very carefully about what we envision for life in Puerto Rico — because things are going to change in the not-so-distant future, and we should be clear about what we cherish and what we’d rather leave behind during undoubtedly chaotic times to come.

In subsequent articles of this series, we will depart from the PR Climate Plan and finish with some ways Puerto Rican society might seize upon the challenges of climate change to invigorate our economy and pick and choose among the features of our current situation for what we truly value.

Author Cade Johnson is a retired chemical engineer (Georgia Tech ’83) and a volunteer with the 501(c)(3) Exaquest Carbon, in California. He has been volunteering with various climate response organizations for almost 10 years and has lived in the Caribbean since 2001 — currently in Naranjito, Puerto Rico. Send comments to [email protected].

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