The four certainties of extreme weather events are rising temperatures, melting glaciers, rising seas and heavy rainfall. A significant portion of Trinidad’s land mass, located at the mouth of the Orinoco delta, includes flatlands, marshes, and wetland formations: the Caroni and Naparima plains, and the North and South Caroni, Nariva, and Oropouche marshes.
What we call the Northern Range is the Northeast Atlantic extension of the Andes Range. Wind passing over a warmer, fuller Atlantic picks up megatons of heat energy, turning into storms, heavy rainfall. These circumstances mean extreme rainfall, floods, landslides, liquid soil. And the social, economic and infrastructural costs. This phenomenon cannot be stopped. However, it can be countered and overcome by a changed economy.
For Trinidad and Tobago, no mitigation or transition to a “low carbon” or “green” economy would be effective without government reform. Mitigation may not be effectively managed by Port of Spain. Our regional corporations are ill-equipped for effective leadership in matters of extreme weather events, accelerating crime and economic decline in rural Trinidad.
The nation should move with dispatch to install 41 precinct chiefs, precinct managers and polling division captains, for hands-on and direct administration – each equipped with oversight and accountability support from a council. Direct, direct, on-the-ground and proactive leadership is required.
Hydrology before hydraulics. Hydrology refers to the behavior of water in its natural and artificial habitats. Hydraulics refers to artificial systems to manage hydrological events. A hydrological map of Trinidad and Tobago is needed, a prerequisite for planning infrastructure projects, such as that envisaged in the state’s plan for a National Transport Plan, which was recently unveiled by the Minister of Works at a meeting of the Commission on Elected of Parliament.
Ample retention dams should be constructed in the fields of Caroni and Naparima to capture sheet runoff across the fields. They must be connected to canals and irrigation systems to provide water to communities, industries and farmers in the less wet season. Small catchment basins or ponds can be constructed in the foothills of the Northern and Central ranges to catch water even before it flows down into residential areas, where densely packed residential areas, paved areas, concrete surfaces, commercial centers and infrastructure industrial limit penetration.
Mangrove afforestation is necessary. Mangroves absorb the brunt of extreme tidal shocks. They provide migration routes for marine and riverine species, species diversity and nurseries. Such afforestation, pursued methodically and persistently over several years, will boost the oyster and fishery economy.
A horticultural revolution is a large-scale tree-planting campaign by citizens of constituencies, ward chiefs and captains of their polling units, with the aim of: [a] stabilize slopes and soils in general; [b] absorbs water from the ground; [c] to encourage a change in consumption habits, from packaged and processed drinks to local fruits; [d] expanding fertilization by bats, bees, butterflies, birds, to improve afforestation; [e] produce hardwoods and specialty lumber for the affordable housing and small boat and other craft markets.
A small ship and craft market should be built. Pirogues, dinghies, punts, barges, canoes, kayaks. This should be linked to standard operating procedures for rescue, recovery, shelter, emergency drills and constituency-level transport. A new economy must be developed to meet evolving climate circumstances.
Global warming and climate change give us the rare opportunity to change or look at our energy equation. To move, as the “saw” of fossil fuels goes down, the “saw” of renewable systems, technologies and products up. Not just to build a “renewable” or “green” or “sustainable” or “low-carbon” economy, but the first complete low-cost economy on the planet. This is an economy that obeys Einstein’s principle, E=mc². Infinitesimal particles can produce incredible amounts of energy. Building an economy based on socio-economic and cultural change – taking little or nothing and building something.
With the democratization of energy (T&TEC and NGC) and water (WASA) through legislation, free supply sources of sunlight, wind and water can be harnessed with continuous improvement of photonics (solar cells, battery storage, transmission, station) and protonic. (computers, broadband, artificial intelligence). To reduce the economic costs of living and improve income for citizens. Key cost of living inputs can be significantly reduced: water, electricity, fuel/public transport, land, food, housing and money. Below are five such markets.
1. Stable and affordable ASH housing market. This includes a project to build a model house loaded with optimal photonic (solar) and protonic (computing) energy. Materials, water, electricity, food, broadband, waste and other technologies.
2. Recycling and waste management market. Centers, constituency-based warehouses, for collection, sorting and distribution at the factory, market or port.
3. The market for renewable technologies (solar cells, batteries, turbines, cables, etc.) production, repair of installations as profitable as the current economy of combustion engines.
4. The market of electric vehicles, or vehicles that use clean fuels, methanol, hydrogen, ethanol, etc.
5. Materials market. This market would trade wood based on soil or waste (plastic material) or forest material.
Trinidad and Tobago currently consumes approximately 8,000 gigawatt hours of energy per year. Almost all of this energy is derived from fossil fuels. Norway is 99 percent renewable-based; New Zealand, 81 percent; Brazil, 78 percent; Colombia, 75 percent.
Our first objective must be to achieve not only a 50 percent ratio, but to lay the foundations, legislatively, politically, and technologically, for a complete, low-cost economy, on Einstein’s principle of making something big out of little or nothing. .
—Wayne Kubalsingh
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