A post-gas, post-covid dawn

Wayne Kublalsingh

A new dawn awaits the planet. But we can start in Trinidad and Tobago. A new dawn in development, genuine development awaits the peoples, lands and communities. A team of persons must now have the courage to stand up and do the following:

Shifting the energy equation.

As one side of the energy see-saw goes down, the oil and gas, the other side must rise. There must be a gradual and ultimately full-fledged shift to photonics, solar energy. We manufacture our own brand cell, from silica from Guyana, and own battery. This is achievable in two ways. By quarantine – putting our best labs, youth and science together; until they find the optimum technology. And/or, by joint-partnership with firms, particularly from embassies and nations, Germany, the United States, China, India, Israel where such technology has been successfully implemented. A photonic economy would look like what the car economy is now in TT: parts places, tyre-shops, garages, banking systems, law and policy all dedicated to the research, manufacture, dissemination, installation and repair of solar systems and batteries and other renewable technologies. On homes, businesses, farms, public buildings and infrastructure.

Water harvesting.

Policy, law, science and technology must be marooned in one fell effort to interpret our changing hydrological characteristics, then build systems to harvest water from ponds, small and large, particularly in flood-prone areas: the foothills of the Northern Range along the Caroni plains, the eastern watershed in the North Oropouche area, the southwest peninsula’s Oropouche wetlands watershed. This, if scientifically done, will protect our watersheds, convert intractable flood waters into an economic asset for all, and provide a great boost to agriculture in the dry season

Affordable sustainable homes.

Again, we must put our sci-tech leaders into maroonage to develop basic affordable and sustainable home models, for a basic one lot of land. The objective is to load our homesteads with the optimum photonics and protonics, that is solar/renewable energy and artificial intelligence (computer) power. The mission is to create optimum energy and financial independence from state corporate entities. Materials, systems for harvesting food (home-gardens) water and energy, and communications, at the home and community levels, can be maximized to make the proverbial “lower” and the “middle” classes free and independent; an emancipation mission never fully realised.

Optimum connectivity

Universal affordable 5G internet access (internet equity) must be matched by connectivity on the ground. The purpose of roadway and highway systems is to connect, not to fragment and disconnect. We shall forge (Point Lisas forge) our metals (scrap, old cars, buses etc) into a bicycle economy, with a system of bicycle, sporting and leisure tracks laid down to connect all constituencies. Caroni (1975) Ltd lands should be used (before it is railroaded by strip malls) to lay down a train system; as part of the road and belt global initiative; based on a popularly mandated mutual contract/partnership. Incrementally, this should be extended towards all four peninsulas. This will save us from the dystopian impacts of the hell-in-a-coconut-shell motorcar economy.

Pharmaceutical revolution

We ought to reinstall our labs in physics and organic and bio-chemistry at our secondary and tertiary institutions. Runaway obesity, diabetes, immune system deficiencies, heart complications, blood-pressure will create oppressive burdens on our health care system. This must be urgently countered by research and development of our own pharmacy, and by a horticultural revolution. We have a rich history of indigenous and colonial pharmacy and botany: the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, the UWI Herbarium, the various state-managed nurseries and experimentation farms and field-stations, the Botanic Gardens and Caroni (1975) Ltd. These ought to be harnessed to boost public health.

Primary and secondary school reform

The most numerous and consolidated catchment of our creativity, intelligence and genius remain our primary and secondary schools. We have arrested its development and curtailed our human intellectual and ethical capacity. We can work harder, achieve more, enhance our ethics, exponentially. This system demands diversification now. SMAARTS: Sports; Maths; Agrarian Science; Arts – Music and Performance; Reading; Technology; Science. As a nation, we are only as powerful as the capacity and integrity of people bequeath to us by our primary and secondary schools. Significant problems at our secondary and tertiary institutions, and our nation generally, arise from deficiencies in our primary schools.

One by one full the basket

This should be the strategy of our economy and food production approach generally. The three historical C’s – cocoa, coconut and cotton. These are precious niche gems of our economic history. We have the soil and climate for all of these – and cotton means local textile, style, brand, culture. The boosting of our markets (vendors), agricultural lands (farmers), sea and estuarine resources (fisheries) will be the rising plank of our see-saw, as we lower indiscriminate access from the metropolis.

Constituency government and crime

Criminal behaviour, the plague upon our nation by iniquity and deviance throughout, shall never be cured, unless constituency government, that is alert and pugnacious government on the ground, is established: Constituency councils, constituency chiefs, constituency executives and constituency polling division captains. Every crime occurs in a constituency. The succour of strong, dependable and resolute leadership has all but disappeared from the ground. Unless this leadership returns, the crooks will always feel empowered.

Covid19, and the shortfalls in fossil fuel revenue, provides opportunities which we dare not miss.