Tag Archives: environmental issues

“[…] As the applause faded, I thought about our inconsistent and unreliable water schedule, even in the rainy season. I’ve seen farmers complain about losing 35% of their crops to relentless heat. “[…] Data centres are water and energy monsters… This is not development—it is deferred reckoning…” The following Letter …

There is a strange irony in the national conversation now unfolding. We are being asked to consider hosting artificial intelligence (AI) data centres but most of us know remarkably little about what they are, what they consume or what they may demand of the country. As a result, most of …

“[…] (John Aboud’s Superior Hotels) consistently refused to adjust the project’s scale, design, or mitigation strategies, demonstrating a profound lack of understanding regarding the severity of the impacts on the sensitive marine environment. “[…] A development of this magnitude at this specific coastal location is fundamentally incompatible with the two …

A recent comment from a visiting sailor has stayed with me in a way that is both embarrassing and deeply concerning. He shared that as he approached Trinidad by sea, he did not need a map to know where he was. The number of plastic bottles floating in our waters …

In 1818, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Trinidad were established under British colonial administration. That same year, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein: the story of a scientist who assembles a living being and then abandons it. Nearly eighty years later, HG Wells wrote The Island of Doctor Moreau, where natural life …

On most maps, Trinidad and Tobago is a small smudge near the mouth of the Orinoco River. In real life, it is a place of astonishing biodiversity, and a place that bigger powers have long treated as useful. Empires, oil routes and warships have passed along this coast, rearranging both …

“[…] How many more accidents must occur due to defective tires, missing lights, or overloaded trucks before enforcement is taken seriously? “[…] Many trucks spew toxic emissions unchecked, while traffic police turn a blind eye. The Demerit System should include emissions violations, penalising offenders as it does for tinted windows. …

When people’s homes are flooded, when farmers lose livestock and crops, when roads become impassable during the rainy season, it’s impossible not to feel sympathy. The shell-shocked look is common as people try to assimilate what has happened, and what they have to do next. Apart from the horror of …

A conversation about imagi­ning our future planet raised a jumble of issues for me. I could grasp the substantive points being made by the 30-year-old, but many of them had not occurred to me before. It seemed that it might be a world where basic survival would define all activities. …

When was the last time you looked at a map of our planet? After reading Gwynne Dyer’s column in last Wednesday’s Express, Routine Rockets, I pulled out an old printed atlas to get a good look at the groupings of the countries. Somehow Google maps did not feel appropriate. Dyer …

In November 2022, part of the Manzanilla-Mayaro road—the once scenic route along the east coast “through the coconuts”—collapsed.  Part of it reportedly collapsed before, in 2014. In that same year, a commentary by Rajiv Jalim, described as a climate change advocate from Trinidad and Tobago, analysed coastal erosion on that …

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines la-la land as “a euphoric, dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life”. In our version, leaders and followers are allergic to facts—inconvenient truths. They look at life through red and yellow-tinted glasses that allow them to possess selective memories. The citizens of La-La …