We began our week 3 adventures with a 7 hour bus ride from Rancho Margot to La Foresta Nature Resort in Quepos, a town in the expansive province of Puntarenas. Puntarenas occupies much of the western coast of Costa Rica and has provided us with beautiful views and plenty of opportunities near the Pacific Ocean throughout the whole week. Despite the length of these bus rides, I’ve found my own version of peace in getting to experience the variety of landscapes that Costa Rica has to offer. Listening to music while watching the ocean, forests, pasturelands, and mountains roll by has allowed me to take time and reflect on natural beauty, conservation, and my own purpose in protecting the health of the planet.
It’s clear the destructive impact that climate change is having on this planet, and this course has helped me to understand that these impacts are not caused equally nor are they felt equally. Both Dr. Libby and Dr. Wasserman continuously articulate this throughout their lectures – the ecological, economic, social, and political forces that are both cause and effect of climate change. Coming to Costa Rica, a country that is smaller in area than Lake Michigan, from a country as large as the United States offers a dynamic and direct learning opportunity. As we spend time here, I feel everywhere we go the disparities that exist here and around the world.
Data from the IEA, the International Energy Agency, enables you to easily compare how a country like Costa Rica differs from the US in terms of energy consumption, energy supply, imports/exports, and a myriad of other energy-related statistics. Doing the research, which can take as little as 5 minutes, cues you into the nuances of sustainable infrastructure and climate change. A quick search helped me discover that Costa Rica’s energy usage is more than 1.5x more efficient than the United States and Canada. It’s 2.5x more efficient than Australia and China. 3.5x more efficient than South Africa. Costa Rica also only contributes 0.02% of the annual global CO2 emissions.
In my opinion, infrastructure is the determining factor of how well a community can respond to climate change. Partially, it is a determining factor of how a country is contributing to climate change. Renewables and sustainable energy consumption are the future of energy – they have to be – but for some reason we are actively choosing to not make this switch. I understand that changing global systems is not an easy task, but it seems like it should be a priority at this point.
So why am I ranting about this? It is easy to treat climate change as a problem for another day. It feels that there are innumerable responsibilities that we have to adhere to every week, every day even. When you’re working full time, where is the time (and energy, for that matter) to engage in advocacy? When gas prices are over $5, where is the extra money to buy groceries not coming from industrialized agriculture or companies that donate to large carbon emitters? It is also difficult to contemplate how you or I, as individuals, can make a difference in an issue as significant as this.
However, climate change is not a tomorrow issue. It is here. The effects are being felt now. Just because we may not feel them in a college town like Bloomington with a (mostly) solid electrical grid and plenty of other built-up infrastructure, we can’t expect that the peace will last forever. Just look at the heat wave happening right now across most of Indiana! We think of heat waves, cold snaps, heavy rainfall events, etc. as anomalies in the weather system, but these kinds of events are becoming more frequent. They are not anomalies – they are a pattern. Some of us got a taste of what is already happening in regards to severe weather this past week while staying at La Foresta.
I never expected that, at a prominent and well-developed ecolodge, my peers and I would fall prey to the effects of climate change. Due to unprecedented rainfall on the coast during high tide, we were caught in a flash flood – my roommate and I were evacuated to new rooms twice after 9pm, trudging through over a foot of rushing water and sewage. Following the ordeal, I couldn’t help but think of the low-lying communities that were affected greater than myself. The irony of the situation was that I am here in Costa Rica to study if communities are prepared for increased environmental hazards, but I ended up getting caught in one. I found my answer.
Risk assessment is a practice that has more and more utility in the study of climate change and public health mitigation as the years pass. The goal of risk assessment is simple – evaluate hazards, their likelihood and impact, and produce information and solutions for impacted communities. In practice, however, it can be a bit more difficult. To understand the hazards of an area, you have to understand the geography, history, demographics, infrastructure, future projections…
The list goes on and on.
Providing a holistic view of the impact is tough, but Izzy and I have tried to make this work throughout the process of our research project. As we’ve traveled across the country and across the different research sites, we’ve conducted interviews with staff members and researchers, scrolled through pages and pages of historical environmental and natural disasters, and we’ve made our own observations in regards to the preparedness of the sites. Our goal is to produce a portfolio of recommendations for these sites as we’ve seen how they vary: how the climate of a region varies. How rivers can swell following a heavy rain. How roads and bridges are critical access points to and from the nearest towns (and sometimes these towns are 30-45 minutes away). You will not catch me complaining about Indiana potholes ever again.
Risk assessment is essential, but it is also just a temporary measure for the long-term, precarious issue that is climate change. It is a preventive measure to protect public health from increased disasters, but none of us want to have to use risk assessment. So how do we propel ourselves into a safer future? I don’t think there is one simple solution… to me that means we should be implementing solutions whenever and wherever we can. Increasing renewables, transitioning away from CO2 heavy means of production, engaging in economic measures like carbon taxes and cap and trade, working to generate global equity, learning to live comfortably with less.
I don’t know the right answer for sure, but I know that this is an issue that we should all be wary of. I believe in the power of individuals and communities, I believe in Earth Optimism, and I believe there is strength in numbers in combating this force which threatens our livelihood and safety.
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