Agnes M. Torres Rivera was one of thousands of Puerto Ricans who were displaced by Hurricane Maria in 2017. She is now displaced in Connecticut, USA alongside 2,200 other Puerto Ricans. As a graduate student, Torres Rivera couldn’t rely on the electricity or internet to assist her in her degree, and the island is facing extreme economic turmoil. Climate change has torn apart her life and the lives of so many others, including Yara Vazquez, a mother of three, and Merelys Torres who had to climb to the second story of her mother’s home to escape the flooding that eviscerated her neighborhood. Increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes is not the only signifier that climate change has arrived. Puerto Rican fishermen report that fish have become scarcer each year. Torres Rivera blames the Trump Administration and the former EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, for putting Puerto Ricans and Americans at further risk of climate change impacts due to their consistent roll backs and disinterest in environmental protections. Six months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico continued to suffer from the second largest power outage in the world on record, which caused $90 billion in damages, a lack of safe water, and thousands displaced.
