Wednesday, 5/26 12:30

Meeting Agenda

What is Puerto Rico doing to mitigate the climate crisis?  Students from CROEM present to Springfield, with checks for attention and understanding. 

Interesting Moment

In the slide about electric cars, a CROEM student talked about the importance of adopting electric police cars for mitigation.  In response, a Springfield Renaissance student remembered that in our meeting with San Juan last week, those students complained that electric cars were too expensive for most Puerto Ricans, and Springfield had responded that Puerto Rico's responsibility for mitigating the crisis should be deprecated.  

Puerto Rico, a verdant island, did not create the crisis and is not contributing to it significantly.  On the other hand, it bears much more of the risks, most signficantly intense hurricanes (like Maria) and sea level rise. We agreed that the island should spend its limited resources on adaptation (like sea walls and microgrids) rather than mitigation.  The CROEM students agreed.  

Conclusion

This meeting was the last of our series with CROEM this year.  Students in Springfield were grateful to learn so much about the island and it's challenges coping with climate change, and those in Puerto Rico were glad to experience mainland students caring about them and wanting to do something about the problem from here.

Teacher Venus Vargas is looking forward to doing such conferences two times a month next year, exploring many other possibilities for cultural exchange around climate, ecology, and other issues.  We look forward to it!