Eco-Roundup: How Puerto Rican Communities Are Fighting Industrial Solar

Every month, I assemble a round-up of stories I’m following and issues I’m covering, with palate cleansers at the end.

A couple weeks ago, as I was rushing around cramming things in a bag to head to the beach, I asked my roommate for a dramatic, easy-reading, immersive summer book recommendation. She pulled out Xochitl Gonzalez’s Olga Dies Dreaming. “This is your summer read,” she told me, and she was right. Set in gentrifying Brooklyn, there was family drama, there was romance, there were secrets, and there were revolutionaries. I finished it quickly, and one sub-plot stuck in my brain.

Under the radar, in the wake of Hurricane Maria, a group of militants equips the humble people of the Puerto Rican countryside with solar panels, leaving them no longer reliant on a corrupt and neglectful state. They begin growing their own vegetables, and eventually their food and energy sovereignty positions them to launch a revolution. It’s a vision of decolonization that reminded me a lot of the visions of energy justice I’ve heard from organizers in Puerto Rico.

The closest real-life versions of this that I’m aware of include the work of the organization Casa Pueblo, which frames distributed solar as an “energy insurrection,” and which has made serious progress in setting up solar panels in the homes of some of the most vulnerable members of the community of Adjuntas, which also serve as a hub for others in need of power after disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. A coalition called “Queremos Sol,” or “We Want Sun,” has similarly been fighting for years for distributed renewables.  

It has not been easy, even though Puerto Rico legislature passed a law in 2019, committing the island to shift to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the public power agency known as PREPA, is in charge of creating a plan to meet that requirement, and its answer to the legislation focuses heavily on large-scale, industrial solar. A recent report, commissioned by Mijente and IDEBAJO, short for the Jobos Bay Eco-Development Initiative, another Puerto Rican grassroots group fighting for energy justice, profiled seven large industrial solar projects being advanced on the island now.

Community members living adjacent to one of the completed projects say the soil compaction required for the panels’ cement bases has prevented the absorption of rainwater, causing flooding. They argue the project was built without a robust hydrological plan, and minimal community consultation, while benefiting from a revolving door between the Puerto Rican government and the energy industry. Governor Pedro Pierluisi, for example, was a lobbyist for the coal — and now solar — company AES before he entered office.

In short, although Puerto Ricans’ — and all of our — survival depends on a shift from fossil fuels to energy sources that do not emit greenhouse gases, there is no reason that solar or wind energy will de facto avoid many of the same problems that come with large fossil fuel projects. It’s something that anyone worried about the climate crisis has got to grapple with, especially because the pollution and other problems associated with wind and solar have become talking points for fossil fuel lobbyists. One of the best solutions to this would be to listen to communities who have genuine concerns about some of these projects and are offering climate-friendly solutions.

I wish I was more convinced that a compound of militant distributors of mutual aid, led by a fugitive, could be living in Puerto Rico right now, plotting a quick revolution advanced via solar panels, without the state getting wind and using an array of surveillance technologies and infiltration to disrupt the movement. Of course, I don’t think Gonzalez’s intention was to offer a realist look into how the energy transition will happen. We need fantastical-seeming stories about how this might end, so we can reach for something bigger than apocalypse avoidance.     

In case you missed it:

I wrote a piece for Drilled about how a think tank in Canada, the Frontier Centre, used a woman’s traffic death in the UK to push for new anti-protest laws aimed at environmental protesters and Indigenous land defenders. The organization claimed that climate protests that block roads are causing medical emergencies and deaths, and to prove the point, report author Joseph Quesnel named two women who had died in a car crash at the same time that a protest was happening. It turns out, the author never reached out to the family members of the deceased. I reached the brother of one of the women, and he was horrified to learn how his sister's name was being used. He underlined that her death had nothing to do with protests and that she "strongly believed in environmental causes and the sustainability of the world that her daughter would grow up in.” This same organization is a member of Atlas Network, which partners with right-wing groups like Frontier around the world. Current and former Atlas Network partners have lately taken an interest in criminalizing environmental activism in their respective countries.

Other Stories I'm Following:

“They don’t see journalists, they see targets.”

I'm just going to feature one set of stories this month, because it's a lot to get through, and it's important. That's Forbidden Stories' Gaza Project. Since Israel began its war on Gaza, after Hamas's October 7 attack, more than 100 Palestinian journalists have been killed. Forbidden Stories's mission is to "continue the work of murdered, imprisoned or threatened journalists," so they brought together 13 newsrooms to do that.

Attacked while filming a child collecting wild grass to eat: Khair Al-Din and Moumen Khair Al-Din, two Al Jazeera journalists, were covering starvation in Northern Gaza and the fate of people who had been forced to eat wild grass to survive, when a drone struck. Rattled, they've since dramatically reduced their reporting and hide their press vests.

Why are Israel's precision drones killing journalists in Gaza?: "At least 18 media workers were reportedly killed or wounded by precision strikes likely launched from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), in violation of the laws of war." Drones offer precision, so shouldn't they be able to avoid journalists wearing press vests?

On Israeli targeting of press infrastructure: "According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), around 70 press organizations, including local radio stations, news agencies, transmission towers, and journalist training institutes, have been partially or completely destroyed since the start of the war." The Israeli military denied it hit the Agence-France Presse building; footage indicates that's not true. Also destroyed: the crucial Press House, a hub for journalists.

On repression of journalists covering illegal West Bank settlements: While covering the eviction of Wadi al-Siq, "one of 18 communities that settlers forcibly evicted since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza," photojournalist Omri Eran-Vardi was punched in the face, then handcuffed by a soldier. In a separate incident, reporters from Palestine TV were detained by Israeli soldiers and tortured.

On the drone assassination of Al Jazeera's Samer Abu Daqqa: The Israeli military refused to allow rescuers to go back for him. When they were finally allowed to return, it appeared that the cameraman had been hit a second time, without witnesses. A former student had warm memories of the school Abu Daqqa was filming, now in ruins.

How Israeli soldiers shot journalists' equipment: When clearly identified reporters were covering an Israeli raid of members of Hamas's armed wing, bullets were fired from two different locations, destroying their cameras. "Considering the presence of entry and exit holes, as well as the bullet fragments found inside the camera, the likelihood of them being stray bullets was 'extraordinarily improbable.'"

Palate Cleansers

I cover topics that are heavy and distressing to take in, so I'm ending these posts with things that make me feel grounded: food, nature, community.

Something Delicious:

I had an excellent breakfast at this Turkish place called Rana Fifteen in Brooklyn today. You pick one of two egg dishes to share with your dining buddy, and it comes out with about a dozen other dishes, from spinach pie to cucumber and tomato salad to honey and clotted cream. The best thing on the plate though was tahini and date syrup together in a little dish, which we poured over pancakes. I am about to be adding this to smoothies, drizzling it on yogurt, who knows what else. This is my future.

Garden Update:

The bee balm and black-eyed cone flower are in bloom, and tiny green raspberries and tomatoes are forming. At the same time, creeping little problems are emerging, and I haven't had time to Google what they could mean. Maybe the mottled spots on the marigolds mean we're overwatering and encouraging disease? Are the raspberry leaves curling up because they don't like the sun?

Bulletin Board:

I know I posted this last month, but it still feels so urgent. To support Palestinian journalists who are risking their lives, please donate to the International Federation of Journalists' safety fund. Also, I've heard of a number of cases where journalistic institutions have lost funding for reporting critically on Israel. If you're the type of person who donates to journalistic institutions, it's worth considering giving money to those that are taking real risks as they challenge entrenched power. Forbidden Stories is a good place to start.