Part 4: The impact of climate change on Puerto Rico – Revisiting status quo
Cade Johnson examines the island’s reliance on fossil fuels and paths to a sustainable future.
Our lives in Puerto Rico are steeped in fossil fuel use. We travel here and there in fossil fuel-powered cars, we eat food delivered by fossil fuel-powered ships, our homes are powered almost exclusively with fossil fuel electricity, and those homes are built of concrete, which itself is made using a great quantity of fossil fuel energy.
Almost every commercial product we buy is produced in great part with fossil fuels. It may seem impossible to escape from fossil fuels.
And yet, one way or another, this fossil fuel use will end. Either we will change in ways of our own volition, or, as climate changes disrupt world economies and create political and civil crises, the changes will be thrust upon us.
So what kinds of change can we be talking about? There are three major aspects of energy use in Puerto Rico in plain sight: electrical generation, transportation and food. We can consider them logically and dispassionately, one by one (keeping in mind that they are inextricably interlinked), see what kind of future Puerto Rico they might suggest, and then begin to evaluate what details we embrace or reject.
We have a system of electricity distribution from several large, centralized fossil fuel power plants that will have to be abandoned sooner or later — they run on fuels with exhaust emissions that will destroy us and that we cannot simply replace with renewable sources. What will the electrical system be after that?
We already know two replacement candidates: solar panels and wind turbines. Although they are not in-kind replacements for fossil fuel power stations, they also do not need to be so industrially concentrated with infrastructure like fuel storage and elaborate distribution — they can be spread out closer to points of use. We can envision a distributed electrical system of renewable energy with many redundancies, which can share land area with other uses.
Almost every small family unit in Puerto Rico has its own car, and mostly we love them. But they are a very energy-intensive way to travel. It is tempting to think we might replace them with electrically powered cars running on a new, renewable, distributed power system.
But even electric cars represent a significant investment of fossil fuel in the materials of their own construction and the ongoing material and energy investment in the vast Puerto Rico road system. We can envision more efficient travel if we increase the use of public transportation systems and concentrate residences and businesses in denser urbanizations where public transportation hubs are accessible.
Agricultural production in tropical climates can be immense. But the intensive, diverse and sustainable agriculture that might have made Puerto Rico incalculably rich in its own sustenance, was supplanted by colonial export monocultures: sugar cane and coffee.
Now that Puerto Rico is somewhat free from the old colonial agricultural policies, we can pursue more diverse and self-centered forms of agriculture.
And if we can wisely plan our agriculture to integrate with the new land uses of distributed electrical power generation and less densely populated suburban areas, we can greatly increase Puerto Rico’s self-reliance.
We can see examples of how a future Puerto Rico might appear by looking at cities of Europe — with mid-rise urban housing blocks interspersed with many public parks, plazas and markets, and often with lower floors devoted to commercial enterprise. Their population density can be 10 times greater than in metro San Juan, while providing elegant and harmonious lifestyles.
There are convenient and inexpensive local and intercity public transportation systems so that if a personal vehicle is needed at all, it can be a bicycle. The countryside beyond the urban areas is sparsely populated and dotted with many small farms generating a wide range of high-quality produce for the markets.
Although European nations are having their own struggles with eliminating reliance on fossil fuels, they are far ahead of most other parts of the world, and we can appreciate their examples.
It feels like a great leap to transform from centralized power systems, suburban sprawl, private transportation and an import economy — to decentralized power, urbanization and self-sufficiency; everything changing at once!
How can we pay for all that development and transformation?! In one final article of this series, we will consider some opportunities that lie before us.
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 he has lived in the Caribbean since 2001 — currently in Naranjito, Puerto Rico. Send comments to [email protected].
