Climate Change in Puerto Rico

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is a particularly vulnerable place in the United States in regards to climate change.  Puerto Rico is uniquely susceptible due to it's status as an island on the hurricane belt, which puts it at risk for rising sea level and severe storms.  In recent years, Puerto Rico has experienced devastating hurricanes, which are increasing in intensity and occurrence due to rising global temperatures (IPCC, 2014).  In fact, the island’s temperatures have risen more than one degree Fahrenheit since the 1950s and the ocean temperatures have risen almost two degrees Fahrenheit since 1901 (Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). This is very alarming because warmer waters are providing the energy for more intense hurricanes to hit the island. In fact, Puerto Rico had two severe storms hit the island in September 2017 only two weeks apart from each other: Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria. 

The United States is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere due to its burning of fossil fuels (Environmental Protection Agency, 2017).  97% of published climate scientists agree that humans are to blame for the warming that has taken place on our planet over the past half-century (Cook, 2016).  Moreover, anthropogenic climate change is to blame for the intensity of the storms hitting Puerto Rico and other islands in the Caribbean (IPCC, 2014).  Extreme storms have the ability to widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor in Puerto Rico. Lower economic areas are not as resilient and are not being able to bounce back from disasters as quickly as more affluent areas.  A continued rise in the number and intensity of hurricanes should be expected with global warming.  As discussed above, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September of 2017, just 2 weeks later the island was hit with the category 5 storm, Hurricane Irma (US Department of Commerce, 2017).  Hurricane Maria’s official death toll is 64 people, but studies show that about 70 times more people died because of the storm (Kishore, 2018; Robles, 2018).  The timing of Hurricane Maria was particularly damaging because Puerto Ricans were still without power and clean water and were just starting to rebuild their communities from damage incurred from Irma by the time Maria hit (Steinbuch, 2018).  The power outage in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria remains the largest power outage in United States history (Santiago, 2018).  While Hurricanes Maria and Irma both affected Puerto Ricans, scientists believe that severe storms like these will occur more frequently due to the effects resulting from human-caused global warming. Hurricanes are a natural phenomenon, but human-caused global warming is clearly exacerbating the magnitude and frequency of the hurricanes, particularly in islands in the Caribbean.

Only 47% of Americans know that Puerto Ricans are United States citizens (Gomez, 2017).  Although Puerto Ricans are United States citizens, there does seem to be less sympathy and concern for the island compared to comparable disasters in the continental US. Environmental injustice has been an issue in Puerto Rico even before the 2017 hurricanes, but the treatment that the territory got from the United States government has shed new light on .the pervasive nature environmental injustice experienced by Puerto Rico (Brown, 2018). In 2017, the same year that Puerto Rico got hit by Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Irma hit Florida while Hurricane Harvey hit Texas.  The federal government responded to these hurricanes in Texas and Florida quicker with more first responders to help, and the United States spent more federal money on restoring both Texas and Florida than it spent on restoring Puerto Rico, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency records (Wilson, 2019). The different responses to the hurricanes was not based on the severity of each of the storms or how much aid was needed.  How the United States responds to each of these natural disasters, in areas that are all entitled to the same amount of  aid from the United States government, is an example of how Puerto Ricans are particularly vulnerable to environmental injustice.  

Maggie Canty is a class of 2019 Environmental Studies-Psychology combined major at St. Lawrence University.  Maggie grew up in Concord Massachusetts, which ignited her passion for environmental activism.  Throughout her life she has sought out experiences involving hiking and getting outdoors, which includes attending the High Mountain Institute in Leadville Colorado as well as being involved many environmental clubs on the St. Lawrence Campus.  This narrative was created for Dr. Jon Rosales' Adapting to Climate Change class in Spring 2019.