Pondering our response to nature’s wrath
Published on Sunday, October 18th 1998 on The San Juan StarEnvironmental concern today is national sport, religion, sales promotion and moral dictum. But when it comes to really focusing on our real environment, we are absolute idiots. Environmental enthusiasts would have us believe that Bambi or The Lion King is nature, and that all that is environmental is good. The environment can do no wrong. Only we wrong the environment. Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, drought, plagues, fire storms, tornadoes and famine are not environmental phenomena; they are all the result of human mismanagement of nature. Fossil fuel burning did it. Or the industrial revolution. Or capitalism-consumerism. Or the military industrial complex. Or the Super-Tube. No, troops. The environment can misbehave just as we all do. It can also inflict severe pain, as we have just seen Georges bring upon us.
Hey, it serves us right. We are environmental nincompoops. Why is it that what is considered an acceptable human habitation or abode has to undergo such drastic and severe last minute remedial modifications to make it withstand a storm? If storms are a normal component or manifestation of nature in this region of the world, why was the abode not built with those remedial contrivances to begin with?
Spaniards suffer no hurricanes in Spain, but if you examine old Spanish colonial structures here, they are hurricane proof! Some even have sheet metal roofs, but the roofs end within the masonry walls and have no overhangs. When hurricane winds blow against the roof, the winds push the roof down, not up. Simple vectorial analysis. The inner windows are normal louvered and glassed windows, but outside there are two massive solid wooden flaps that bolt tight with a tranca or a huge pestillo. Some people call those outer windows tormenteras. Wonder why. I remember visiting relatives at the campo when I was a child and seeing another structure which was also called a tormentera. It was essentially no more than a tent made of sheet metal –"zinc", as we say– except that the roof angle was fairly steep, it had no vertical walls, and the edges of the roof came all the way down and were buried in the ground. The tormentera was neighbor to the letrina. Just in case.
Did you see cars with tape on the windshields after Georges? For protection? Is that silly or what? If that car’s windshield cannot withstand the wind while traveling at 125 miles per hour, why is the 125 mph number on that car’s speedometer to begin with?
But, alas, our environmental ignorance is not limited to environmental disasters. Let’s review our environmental incongruities. I wear a necktie to work, with a long-sleeved shirt, and I put on a coat, even during summer, at 18° north of the Equator. Then my employer, who made me dress up in the first place, has to provide decent working conditions for me in my place of work because of a federal law called the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA). So the building has to be nicely air conditioned. Except that the sun coming in the glass window panes on one side of the building makes the place a bit warm. So the glass panes are tinted. This makes the place dark. So we turn on the lights. The sun is shining outside, but we must turn on the lights even in bright sunlight. There is also a nice breeze blowing, but you can’t feel it inside. Don’t forget: air conditioning.
Oh, and at home! I have a washing machine. I also even have a clothes dryer. My grandmother and my mother used to dry clothes by hanging them on a line outside. The breeze and the sun did the work. But at my age I don’t want my neighbors to see my dainty Playboy calzoncillos, so I use the dryer. The dryer is electric. It uses electric power, which is generated by burning fossil fuel and polluting Cataño. No, no clotheslines for us in the tropics, thank you.
Oh, yes, the shower. Do you realize that there are generations of Puerto Ricans that cannot take a shower or a bath with water at ambient Puerto Rico temperature? Too cold. Gotta have water heaters that also pollute Cataño. Hate to tell you, but there are also generations of Puerto Ricans who cannot sleep without air conditioning. These were the ones that made all that racket with the noisy little power plants that wouldn’t let you sleep after Georges. There was an operatic one kitty corner behind my house. My neighbors in back just can’t sleep without that air conditioner. Don’t you feel sorry for them? I couldn’t sleep because of their power plant, but they didn’t feel sorry for me! I do feel sorry for their children, however, because these air-conditioned-cradled kids will never be able to join the Boy Scouts and enjoy the experience of camping out. There are no air conditioners at Camp Guajataca.
Can you drive your car when its air conditioner isn’t working? I know people that when their car air conditioner fails, they park it and rent another car.
Some people went without water after Georges. My grandmother didn’t after her storms in her day. She had an aljibe. It’s an Arabic name for a structural container that gathers and stores rainwater from the roof of the house. It was part of life then. Now it’s not highly regarded because it may breed mosquitoes that carry Dengue fever, although a small piece of screen could remedy that.
Georges over, we will see a rush to legislate against noisy power plants. The law is there, but it’s not enforced. For one thing, cops would have to carry noise level meters. I hope they revise the penalty, however. Noisy power plant offenders should be made to sleep with them inside their air conditioned bedrooms and suffer carbon monoxide poisoning; a sort of a humane death penalty. We will also see a rush to change our building codes so that our homes are hurricane proof a priori instead of a posteriori. Great! It’s about time.
But let’s not just stop at reviewing our building codes. We should also review our behavioral living codes as well. Let’s accept that hurricanes and other disasters are part of nature and design our physical and societal structure so that we can survive in spite of them. Darwin used to call this environmental adaptation. It helps survival.