Climate Point: Puerto Rico tragic example of power grid not ready for climate change

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I’m Janet Wilson from Palm Springs, California, where thankfully it has cooled off and the threat of blackouts has slowed. 

Not so in Puerto Rico, where 80% of the island was still without power on Wednesday, two days after Hurricane Fiona dumped torrential rainfall amid lashing winds, almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.  

"It's been a nightmare," one resident told USA Today, where tarps still cover thousands of roofs due to damage from Maria, and cisterns and back-up generators are features of everyday life. On bright spot: Puerto Rican residents and businesses who’ve installed rooftop solar panels said they still had power after Fiona wiped out the island’s grid, as chronicled by Canary Media and Inside Climate News..

The huge power outage occurred, despite billions allocated to bolster Puerto Rico’s power grid after Maria, due to sluggish bureaucracy combined with an unwillingness to shift to widescale renewables, per Vox. It's a prime example of the aging U.S. power grid and transmission lines that experts say can't handle planned renewable power, let alone ever fiercer storms and ever hotter, longer heat waves in California, Texas and the southeast.

Good news out of Congress on Wednesday, though, where the Senate approved an amendment to a Kigali international treaty amendment aimed at more quickly ratcheting down fast-acting HFC's in refrigerators and air conditioners that are causing climate change, including fiercer storms and floods.

In other world news, I immediately thought of newly crowned King Charles' "green" track record, though his and Britain's environmentalism are a bit muddier than I thought.

Read on for more, including a fascinating story on historic New England cemeteries trying to fight rising tides, and another on cliff-dwelling Californians losing similar battles with the Pacific, as well as unairconditioned schools grappling with higher temperatures.

And if you want to help folks who are suffering in Puerto Rico, see links below, too. 

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