{"id":8707,"date":"2022-06-13T03:44:51","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T03:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/?post_type=product&p=8707"},"modified":"2022-06-13T03:44:51","modified_gmt":"2022-06-13T03:44:51","slug":"how-to-survive-climate-change-a-lesson-from-hurricane-maria","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/fr\/how-to-survive-climate-change-a-lesson-from-hurricane-maria\/","title":{"rendered":"How to survive climate change: a lesson from Hurricane Maria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rest of the world can learn from Puerto Rican communities rallying together to recover from a natural disaster fuelled by climate change.<\/h4>\n
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Christmas is a big deal in Puerto Rico \u2013 celebrations traditionally run from November to February \u2013 but festivities are in scant supply at the end of 2017. On a hot and sweaty morning in mid-December, Pablo M\u00e9ndez L\u00e1zaro and a band of volunteers are delivering not Christmas presents but essential filtration systems, food and medical supplies in the eastern interior of the island. At each house, the volunteers show residents how to purify the water they\u2019ve collected in their backyards.<\/p>\n

From the filter pouch, through the tubing, into the plastic bottle below. A basic act of alchemy transforms the contents of rain buckets, muddied by mosquitoes and sipped by any number of cats, into water fit to drink, clean wounds or even just wash dishes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater is life,\u201d says M\u00e9ndez L\u00e1zaro, who has demonstrated this trick hundreds of times in the preceding weeks. \u201cFor a few months we can live without hospitals, without shopping centres, but, without water, no one can live.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Water was in no short supply on 20 September 2017, when Category 4 Hurricane Maria cut like a buzz-saw across the island. The storm ditched two to three feet of rain, flooding houses and hospitals, while raging winds tore roofs off houses and electrical transmission towers from the ground, plunging the island into darkness.<\/p>\n

Climate change may have played a role in the disaster \u2013 warmer ocean temperatures generally feed stronger storms. But even before the hurricane, exceptionally hot days, air pollution and sea-level rise \u2013 all symptoms of a changing climate \u2013 had already been taking their toll on the islanders\u2019 health and financial stability.<\/p>\n

Reference:<\/h4>\n