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Haiti’s Energy Problems
Gail Tverberg, the Oil drum
We hear a lot about Haiti’s problems with its recent earthquakes, but we don’t hear much about its underlying energy problems. It seems to me that these underlying energy problems were a big part of its difficulties before the earthquake, and will make finding a long term solution difficult. In this post today, I would like to offer some energy background to the Haiti story.
In Figure 1, I compare Haiti’s total per capita energy consumption to that of a number of other countries. I included China and India because these are large and well known. I included Jamaica and the Dominican Republic because they are other Caribbean nations, and the Dominican Republic occupies the other half of the island where Haiti is located. I included Afghanistan because it uses even less energy than Haiti. I didn’t include “developed” countries, because their consumption is so high in comparison, it would be hard to read the chart.
When one looks at Figure 1, one can see that Haiti’s per capita energy consumption is about one fifth as much as India’s and about 1/17 as much as China’s. It is about 1/22 as much as the world average. I didn’t include the USA in the chart, but Haiti’s per capita energy consumption is about 1/100 that of the USA. Total per capita energy consumption is relatively flat, both on a world average basis and for Haiti.
(30 Jan 2010)
Living on the edge of disaster
Robert Walker, The Register Citizen
Pat Robertson’s assertions notwithstanding, the people of Haiti have fallen victim to an act of nature, not God’s wrath for rejecting French colonial rule.
The 7.0 temblor that struck Port au Prince this past week was not the first major quake that has rocked a Caribbean nation and it will not be the last.
Earthquakes happen in greater frequency along geological fault lines like the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden Fault System that runs along Haiti’s southern coast.
While the death toll in Haiti is still unknown, it is, no doubt, one of the largest humanitarian disasters in memory…
(22 Jan 2010)
related: The Long Wait: Reproductive Health Care in Haiti
The west owes Haiti a bailout. And it would be a hand-back, not a handout
Gary Younge, The Guardian
Last week started with a conference in Montreal, called by a group of governments and international agencies calling themselves Friends of Haiti, to discuss the long and short term needs of the recently devastated Caribbean nation. Even as corpses remained under the earthquake’s rubble and the government operated out of a police station, the assembled “friends” would not commit to cancelling Haiti’s $1bn debt. Instead they agreed to a 10-year plan with no details, and a commitment to meet again – when the bodies have been buried along with coverage of the country – sometime in the future.
A few days later in Washington, Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, came before the house oversight committee to explain why he paid top dollar for $85bn worth of toxic assets when he bailed out the insurance company AIG. Geithner said he was faced with a “tragic choice”. “The moral, fair and just choice is to protect the innocent,” he said.
There is no connection between these two events. But in the public imagination maybe there should be. The world cannot yet find $1bn in debt relief for Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, a country that spent more in 2008 servicing its debt than it did on health, education and the environment combined and that has now been flattened. But, over a weekend, a single country could rustle up $85bn to keep a single company in business. It is an obscene reminder that, in the world of global capital, distressed assets are still more valued than distressed people…
