So true, thanks for posting. I was in touch with friends in Cuba following things as they unfolded during and after Hurricane Maria in both Cuba and Puerto Rrico, and the contrast between how things were handled in the two countries couldn't have been more stark.
They did have storm shelters in Cuba, and they were evacuated to the shelters, but the folk who died managed to avoid going to them, and perished in falling buildings in Havana. People were quite upset at their government in Cuba for allowing even ten deaths, but they were shocked and dismayed to hear how badly their fellow Latinos in nearby Puerto Rico fared in comparison.
Though there were many more deaths during the live storm in Puerto Rico, the real bulk death toll happened in the three months following the storm, folk died from just having no money or resources to sort out food, clean water, or any kind of power.
It isn't just a government at fault, it seems to me, but deeper, the system of capitalism which Western governments are now tied into, money is not supplied to anything for which no obvious return to investors exists.
This is killing everything, the main driver behind pollution, crime, weapons, and wars, actually driving all progression backwards.
An example of technology being driven backwards, also on Puerto Rico, is the recent loss of the Arecibo observatory, it collapsed due to lack of maintenance, a problem we are going to see manifesting in many things soon, watch out for increased aircraft disasters.
The same driver as a result also perverts our view of what we think is sustainable and what isn't.
There is no technical reason that a solar farm can't be maintained forever, replacing panels as they fail one at a time, the lifetime of each panel varies, so they don't all fail at the same time, but still for capital investment purposes the solar farm is given a lifetime set by the period yielding maximum profit from the venture, usually excluding disposal.
Making this the information known and accepted without question by most people gives the perfect excuse to just treat the solar farm as disposable capital investment, to be discarded after it has provided maximum profitable yield, so folk have a very negative, skewed view of the sustainability of solar.
The trick to successful solar is to install it distributed throughout all communities, backed up by hydrogen, no grid, and no batteries needed.
Then excess hydrogen can be sold to transportation, yielding income for all things in the community including maintaining and scaling up, if needed.
A further fundamental thing about solar power, neglected by the economy of capitalism, is that because the Joules from the sun are pushed to us for free, and they add to those already used by nature to create everything we know, they are not accounted for as yet, in the economic system of all promises to pay being promises to extract.
This breaks a fundamental rule of Austrian economics, that money should be issued reflecting all product created.
The Joules from solar are effectively product created, since they are additional to the previously existing energy capital of Earth, but because they are pushed to us for free, no extraction needed, money has to be issued for free to all people, to accurately and honestly represent the solar product being received.
The effect of breaking that rule is loss of the value of the currency in markets, since it is not the money which is the real thing of value, but the product.
Hence a fundametal reason we are now seeing ever increasing inflation in all currencies.
Bottom line is, in the solar powered world that we need to become, like nature, solar is perfectly sustainable, but there will become a number of industries, "Bullshit Industry" we will identify as no longer needed, thus lightening the energy load.
Where I was getting to, before going into war and peace here, is that the best thing people can start doing now, to ensure their future safety and wellbeing, is start to install this distributed community solar power, ASAP.
A community can be made suitably solar powered in a matter of months, therefore, between them, all communities can do the same.
Money can be demanded from governments to fund this, by pointing out that there is already a substantial backlog of un-monetised solar product already received and put to use, many GWhrs in every country, so they should issue that money now to fund the required infrastructire, besides alleviating everyone's immediate money worries.
After that is done, all else falls into place, it seems to me.