It's not just that Puerto Rico was already laden with chronic debt and acutely injured by an earlier storm that had passed just north of the island two weeks before. Nor is it merely that Maria, probably the most destructive hurricane in the island's history, is the kind of event that climate change experts have long warned would be among the risks facing coastal areas as the planet warms.
From the vantage point of environmental justice, this storm also represents many of the ways that those risks are unfairly distributed—and whether the United States, like the world as a whole, is prepared to come to the aid of poor and vulnerable communities that have contributed little to climate change.
The Category 4 hurricane wiped out Puerto Rico's electric grid, and it's expected to be out for months, leaving the island's 3.4 million people—about 44 percent of whom already lived below the poverty line—isolated without life's basic necessities and. As of late Thursday, Puerto Rico's governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said there had been no contact with officials in 85 percent of the island.
Among the questions will be this narrow one, which Congress and the White House will have to grapple with: If there is not enough money to pay all the costs, yet untallied, of the record hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico this summer, will the funds be equitably allocated? The two other devastated states have among the largest voting blocs in Congress, and Puerto Rico has no vote.
Puerto Rico is, in many ways, a microcosm for climate fairness issues at the global level. Puerto Ricans use one-third as much energy and emit less than half as much carbon dioxide as the rest of the United States on a per capita basis yet bear the risk of increased hurricane activity in a warming Atlantic basin.
Like its Caribbean neighbor, the U.S. Virgin Islands, which was also hit by hurricanes Maria and Irma, Puerto Rico is a part of the world that doesn't contribute significantly to climate change but is impacted significantly by it.
Since 2003, more than 4,000 natural disasters, including extreme temperatures and droughts, storms, floods and epidemics, have wreaked havoc on the Caribbean, up from fewer than 100 over a similar time period at the beginning of the 20th century. The number of the strongest storms, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, will likely increase over the coming century, according to the latest National Climate Assessment.
"This is the new norm," Christina Chan, climate resilience practice director for the World Resources Institute and former branch chief for the U.S. State Department's climate change office, said. "How do we start building that into the bloodstream of our economic, social and development work, whether you are talking domestic or international?"
How Will Congress Respond?
The initial federal response to Maria suggests the U.S. will step up.
As news of the devastation on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands made headlines on the mainland, President Donald Trump upped the federal response from "emergency" declarations to "disaster" declarations for the territories, and prominent Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah, pledged their support.
The declarations will cover millions of dollars worth of initial recovery efforts, but full recovery and rebuilding costs will be in the tens of billions and will follow on the heels of unprecedented hurricane recovery spending in Texas and Florida, states with a combined Congressional delegation of more than 60 representatives, mostly Republicans. Puerto Rico has one, non-voting "resident commissioner" in Congress, Jenniffer González.
"Texas and Florida will receive the bulk of that funding," Roger-Mark De Souza, director of population, environmental security and resilience at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said. "It doesn't mean that there isn't additional need or greater need on these more vulnerable territories, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, so there needs to be a consideration of how we balance those allocations, to meet the needs of those who are most vulnerable."
Read more at Devastated Puerto Rico Tests Fairness of Response to Climate Disasters
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