by Naomi Klein
That is a change worth making, and the rest of this chapter shows how some people are already making it. By turning disasters into stepping-stones toward a way of life that fights climate change, they are testing tools that anyone can use and that you and your generation can build on.
AN ANCIENT INVENTION OF NATURE
One form of carbon capture and storage is easy to do, does not require expensive technology, and provides many benefits in addition to cleaning the air.
It is an ancient invention of nature called the tree.
A 2019 article in Science magazine called “restoration of trees” on a global scale one of the best ways to limit climate change. The article says that by planting trees to cover 2.2 billion acres (0.9 billion hectares, or slightly less than the total area of the United States) of the Earth’s surface—not including the cities, farmland, and forests that already exist—we would increase the forest area of our planet by 25 percent. Once grown, these additional trees could absorb and store a quarter of the carbon in the atmosphere.
There’s a catch, though. If we do not act promptly, climate change will make parts of the Earth’s surface too hot, dry, or flooded to grow forests.
Other scientists have questioned some of the article’s claims, but the overall point is sound. Trees are a powerful weapon against greenhouse gases.
Together with Greta Thunberg, author Philip Pullman, and many other activists, artists, and scientists, I signed a letter about the climate-protecting benefits of trees and other plants that was published online in 2019. You can read it at the back of this book under the heading “A Natural Solution to the Climate Disaster.” In the letter, we urged the world’s governments to work with local communities on “a thrilling but neglected approach to averting climate chaos while defending the living world.”
Ecosystems are our planet’s natural tools for taking excess carbon out of the air, because the plants in every ecosystem absorb CO2 and release oxygen. Not just forests but also wetlands, grasslands, marshes, and even natural seabeds remove and store carbon. They are also home to many of the living things that share our planet and now face mass extinction because of our activities. Our goal should be to protect, restore, and grow these vital ecosystems while we work to make our industries and our way of life less dependent on carbon.
This is something we can do right now. It would be wonderful if the world joined in a huge tree-planting project, but until it does, we can act on our own, in whatever patches of earth we have. Trees are homes for birds and insects, sources of food (certain kinds of trees, at least), and symbols of belief in the future, because they take a long time to grow. Planting and tending even a single tree says, “I believe in that future too.”
LIGHTING THE WAY
A powerful hurricane struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. Hurricane Maria lashed the Caribbean island, which is part of the United States, with high winds and heavy rain. After the storm’s fury died down, people left their homes to take stock of the damage.
In the small mountain city of Adjuntas, they found themselves without electricity and water. This was true across Puerto Rico. But Adjuntas was also totally cut off from the rest of the island. Every single road was blocked by mounds of mud that had washed down from the peaks, or by tangles of fallen trees and branches.
There was one bright spot in Adjuntas, though. Just off the main square, light shone through every window of a large pink house. The building glowed like a beacon in the terrifying darkness.
What I saw in Puerto Rico after the hurricane reminded me in many ways of what I had seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But one part of the island, that shining pink house, felt very different. I soon learned that something new and hopeful was happening around it.
That house was Casa Pueblo, a community center and the headquarters of an environmental group. Twenty years earlier, a family of scientists and engineers had founded Casa Pueblo. On its roof they had put solar panels, which capture the sun’s energy and turn it into electricity. At that time, solar panels may have seemed like a futuristic or fringe thing to do. But over the years Casa Pueblo had upgraded its panels and made use of the island’s plentiful sunshine.
Unlike the electrical poles that were down across the island, those solar panels had somehow survived the winds and falling trees of Hurricane Maria. In the sea of darkness after the storm, Casa Pueblo had the only lasting electrical power for miles around.
Casa Pueblo’s rooftop solar panels made the pink building a beacon in the darkness after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico.
People from all over the hills of Adjuntas made their way to the warm and welcoming light. It would be weeks before the official disaster-relief agencies would bring significant help, so the community organized its own relief efforts. The pink house quickly became the nerve center. People gathered food and water, tarps to make temporary shelters, and chain saws to clear the streets. They used the priceless supply of solar power to charge their phones.
Casa Pueblo also became a lifesaving field hospital. Elderly people who needed electricity to power their oxygen machines filled its airy rooms. Thanks to its solar panels, the center’s radio station could keep broadcasting. The storm had knocked out power lines and cell towers, so that station was the community’s only source of information.
I arrived in Puerto Rico a few months into these efforts. I had come to see how this US territory was dealing with the disaster. I visited the island’s south coast, home to a lot of their industry. People there had suffered some of Maria’s most cruel effects. Their low-lying neighborhoods were flooded. They feared that the storm had stirred up toxic chemicals from nearby power plants and other industries. And even though the area had two of the island’s largest electricity plants, many people were still living in the dark.
Later that day, the bleak mood shifted as we drove up into the mountains to Casa Pueblo. Open doors welcomed us. We drank coffee from the center’s own coffee plantation, which the community manages. Overhead, rain drummed on those precious solar panels. It was like stepping through a portal into another world—a Puerto Rico where everything worked and the mood was hopeful.
Now those solar panels didn’t look silly at all. In fact, they looked like the best hope for survival in a future that is sure to bring more drastic weather shocks like Hurricane Maria—a storm that had been supercharged by climate change.
THE BATTLE FOR PARADISE
The rising temperatures of global warming made Hurricane Maria extra powerful, but long before those fierce winds came, Puerto Rico had other problems.
Puerto Rico is not a state. It’s a colony of the United States. That means its people do not have the same rights as other Americans. They cannot vote in federal elections, and the federal government generally treats the island as a way to make money for the mainland.
Also, because it is a colony, Puerto Rico did not design its own economy. The island imports 85 percent of its food, even though it has some of the most fertile soil in the world. Before Maria, it also got 98 percent of its energy from imported fossil fuels, even though it has sun, wind, and waves that could provide plenty of cheap, clean, renewable power. There were many other ways that Puerto Rico’s economy had been built to serve others, and for that reason, it had accumulated large debts, owed to a range of creditors off the island.
A new chapter in the island’s troubles began in 2016, when a US law created a program that brought new economic suffering. The law claimed that it would make Puerto Rico’s debt more manageable and speed up infrastructure and development projects on the island. In reality, it attacked the glue that holds a society together: education, health care, the electricity and water systems, communications networks, and more—all to cut costs and pay off creditors.
It’s no wonder the law didn’t help Puerto Ricans. It put an unelected board of managers in charge of overseeing the territory’s economy. To free up funds toward paying Puerto Rico’s debts, this board approved an austerity plan that
slashed the budget for public services. The economic program simply made Puerto Rico’s bad situation worse. And then Hurricane Maria roared through.
The storm was so powerful that it would have made even the sturdiest society reel. Puerto Rico didn’t just reel. It broke.
About three thousand people lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Maria. A few were lost to the raging wind and water. Most deaths, though, happened afterward. People could not plug in medical equipment when electricity was down for months. Some had no choice but to drink contaminated water. Health networks did not have medicine to treat illnesses. These tragedies showed how all levels of government entrusted to protect Puerto Ricans, on the island and in Washington, DC, had failed to put in place sturdy systems for supplying essential services in emergencies.
Hurricane Katrina had exposed the same weaknesses in emergency preparation and disaster response in New Orleans. And now, in Puerto Rico, similar problems unfolded long after the disaster itself.
Along with smashing the island’s infrastructure, Maria damaged its supply lines for food and fuel. And just as things had been after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans twelve years earlier, federal emergency relief efforts failed horribly in Puerto Rico. A contract to supply thirty million meals to Puerto Rico went to a Georgia company that had a record of failure and a staff of one person. A Montana energy company with just two employees (and ties to the US secretary of the Interior) got a $300 million contract to help rebuild the energy grid. These contracts were later canceled, but because of these and other failures, desperately needed food supplies and electrical repair materials sat unused in warehouses for months.
So, long after the storm, ordinary Puerto Ricans were still living by flashlight and battling depression and misery because once again, the government had used a disaster as an opportunity to hand out corporate contracts.
Like Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the catastrophe of Maria was more than a natural disaster. It was a storm supercharged by climate change that slammed into a society that had been deliberately weakened by government decisions. Those decisions had given greater weight to debt repayment than to the well-being of people and their communities.
The limp, late relief efforts after the storm showed how little those in power valued the lives of Americans who were largely poor, Spanish speaking, and descended from slaves and Indigenous People. Communities in Florida and Texas, however, received more and faster aid after similar devastating hurricanes that year.
But even though the story of Hurricane Maria seemed to be just another sadly familiar cycle of neglect, crisis, and disaster capitalism, there is hope. After Maria, Puerto Rico became more than a disaster scene. It also became a battleground of ideas. On one side were the usual disaster capitalists, treating Puerto Rico the way they had treated New Orleans. On the other side were Puerto Ricans struggling to survive, but also doing things differently.
Casa Pueblo, the light in the darkness after the storm, shows a path that could take Puerto Ricans—and others around the world—to a more secure future.
Fighting for Hearts and Minds
For one activist from Bayamón, Puerto Rico, environmental passion started at an early age. Amira C. Odeh Quiñones remembers snorkeling at a coral reef when she was six years old. By the time she was twelve, she says, “It no longer existed.”
Odeh Quiñones was in her midtwenties in 2017, when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico. “I saw all of the destruction and how much we depended on imports because when the ports closed for some days we would run out of food,” she says. “The streets I walked all my life were unrecognizable. It was scary to see that after each day that passed nothing got better.”
To focus on social and climate justice after Maria, Odeh Quiñones organized a branch of 350.org, a group that describes itself as “an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.” (I was on its board of directors for many years.) In addition, her environmental work has included a successful campaign to stop the sale of bottled water on the campus of the University of Puerto Rico.
Beyond the issue of climate change, Odeh Quiñones wants to see justice for the people of Puerto Rico, as the island struggles to recover from Hurricane Maria. The lasting damage from the storm, she points out, has ruined lives. “The coastal communities or mountain towns still have thousands of homes destroyed,” she says. “Not only is there still broken infrastructure but also broken families…. The recovery of the minds and hearts haven’t happened at all.”
Decision-making about Puerto Rico’s future, claims Odeh Quiñones, should include all of its people. “Communities should be in this conversation because whatever policy is decided will be key for us to be able to survive.” She is right. Solutions are more likely to be accepted and to work when the people who will live with them have the chance to help shape them, rather than people being told from above or from outside what they must do. Whether in the aftermath of a hurricane or in the face of climate change, those who are most affected must be heard.
LEARNING FROM CASA PUEBLO
On a tour of Casa Pueblo, I saw the solar-powered radio station and the solar-powered movie theater that had opened after the storm. There was a butterfly garden and a store that sold local crafts as well as Casa Pueblo’s popular coffee. Pictures on the wall showed scenes from the forest school where the center does outdoor education. They also showed a protest in Washington, DC, that had stopped a project to build a gas pipeline through the mountains near Casa Pueblo.
Arturo Massol-Deyá, a biologist, and president of Casa Pueblo’s board of directors, told me that the hurricane had changed his view of what was possible. For years he had pushed for Puerto Rico to get more of its energy from renewable sources, such as solar panels and wind turbines. With the island depending on imported fossil fuel, and a few centralized stations producing power, he had warned that one big storm could knock out the whole electrical grid.
Then it happened.
Now, after the storm, everyone understood the risks Massol-Deyá had spoken of. The collapse of the old system was helping him make the case for renewable energy. But even solar panels and wind turbines can be damaged in storms. This can be a problem if power comes from huge, central solar and wind farms that send electricity long distances over lines that can be blown down. Instead, people began to understand, a system of small, community-based power systems, like Casa Pueblo’s, can produce electricity right where it is used.
To spread the word about the benefits of solar power, Casa Pueblo handed out fourteen thousand solar lanterns after the storm. These small boxes sit outside during the day, taking in and storing the sun’s energy. By night they create pools of light.
The center also distributed solar-powered refrigerators to households that still lacked power months after the storm. Casa Pueblo has now started a campaign that calls for half of Puerto Rico’s power to come from the sun.
Several Puerto Ricans I spoke with called Hurricane Maria “our teacher.” The storm taught people what didn’t work. It also taught them what did work—not just solar panels but also small organic farms that used traditional farming methods, which stood up to floods and wind better than modern industrial farming. And unlike imported food, products from local farms were available even when long-distance transport was interrupted.
Overnight, everyone could see just how dangerous it was for this fertile island to have lost control over its agricultural system. But in communities that still had traditional farms, people could also see that the old, ecologically aware way of farming was not some quaint relic of the past. It was a crucial tool for surviving the future.
The storm showed the importance of deep community relationships, including ties to Puerto Ricans who were living off the island. When the government kept failing, people managed to give lifesaving aid to each other.
After Maria, dozens of Puerto Rican organizations came together to deman
d change. Under the banner Junte Gente (Spanish for “The People Together”), they call for a fair and just shift to the next, rebuilt economy. They want that economy to be based on community; clean energy; and new education, transportation, and food systems that truly serve the Puerto Rican people—not just a reinforced copy of the old system.
Disasters such as hurricanes disrupt ordinary life. Often, rebuilding a community or even a country is necessary after a disaster. As you saw in chapter 3, some people see these disruptions and reconstructions as opportunities to make the rich richer. But the rebuilding after a disaster can go in the opposite direction. It can be an opportunity to enact good ideas that were once seen as impossible. It can be an opportunity to change the old, harmful ways we have been doing things—and a chance to plan a future that can better cope with the shocks of climate change, as well as other crises like pandemics.
GREENING GREENSBURG
Like Puerto Rico, the town of Greensburg, Kansas, was devastated by a disaster. Unlike Puerto Rico, the town had political independence and received the financial aid it needed, not just to rebuild itself but to reinvent itself as a town looking toward the future, not the past.
On a May night in 2007, Greensburg was nearly wiped off the map by a tornado. It was no ordinary storm—it was big and powerful enough to be called a super-tornado. Its winds reached tearing speeds of 205 miles (330 kilometers) per hour. Where it touched the ground, it was about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) across, wider than the town itself.
People who live in Kansas know about tornadoes. When the warning sirens sounded in Greensburg that night, the residents took cover in basements or the most secure places they could find. For customers at a gas station store, for example, the safest place was inside the walk-in cooler.
