SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — It was cold and windy, but Mónica Araya relished the moment she was forced to get out of her car. Stepping out into the fresh Norwegian air, Araya asked her husband to snap a photo as she plugged their electric vehicle into the recharge station. She smiled for the photo, as her mind replayed their 300-mile journey across Norway, done without burning a single drop of fossil fuels. Why can’t we do this in Costa Rica? she thought.
Few would draw such immediate parallels between the wealthy Scandinavian country of Norway and small, tropical Costa Rica, but Araya, a Costa Rican economist who splits her time between San José and Oslo, believes Costa Rica could mimic her adopted country’s plans to ban gasoline-powered cars.
After returning to San José early this year, Araya launched a campaign to ban petroleum in Costa Rica. Though still in its infancy, her initiative, “Costa Rica Sin Petroleo” (Costa Rica without petroleum), comes at a critical moment for Costa Rica’s future in carbon emissions. Under pressure from the Paris climate agreements and its own goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021 — a goal reaffirmed at the U.N. climate change conference underway in Morocco — Costa Rica is desperate to reduce its carbon footprint.
Coming up short on these very public environmental commitments could damage Costa Rica’s pristine green reputation, but despite what’s at stake, the current government has pushed the complicated issue of transportation aside.
Costa Rican citizens have now taken up the effort, launching transportation initiatives and protesting the country’s deteriorating roads and ineffective and polluting public bus system. Though a full ban still faces stiff opposition, in recent months the movement picked up important political allies and is growing in popular support.
“We have always been a small country with big ideas,” Araya says. “It is connected with our identity and with these obstacles we are now facing with carbon neutrality, it is time that we think big again.”
Though Costa Rica is a small developing country, it has an outsized reputation for environmental friendliness. It regularly tops lists of the world’s greenest countries and its long streaks using only renewable electricity have repeatedly been used as fodder for the internet’s click-bait content mills.
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There are many reasons Costa Rica deserves this environmental praise — its extensive national parks system, decades-long reforestation effort or ban on open-pit mining, for example — but while the country’s victories often receive international attention, its congested roads and gas-guzzling cars slide under the radar. According to data from the navigation app Waze, San José has the worst traffic of any metropolitan area in Latin America, and the country’s inability to address its transportation problems may single-handedly block Costa Rica from reaching carbon neutrality.
Hydrocarbons used for transportation now make up 44 percent of the energy consumed in Costa Rica and are responsible for more than half of the country’s carbon-dioxide emissions. While state-led programs in agriculture and industry have allowed Costa Rica to continue limping toward carbon neutrality, transportation is the only area left where significant emissions reductions can be made.
Unlike most countries that burn fossil fuels to produce electricity, Costa Rica derives nearly all of its electricity from hydro, wind and geothermal sources. Switching to a transport system that relies on electricity vehicles would eliminate almost all of the country’s oil use. Despite this advantage, so far, no arm of the government has summoned the political will to create a new public transportation system or to encourage the import of electric cars.
“Obviously public transportation is very important, but climate change crosses so many different sectors,” says Patricia Campos, the sub-director of climate change within the country’s Environment Ministry. “Because of the movements in politics, we are waiting on other parts of the government to move forward.”
With government transportation reform stalled in the slow-moving cogs of bureaucracy, Costa Rica continues to use gas-powered vehicles and to import all of its oil. The high import costs have spurred a strong oil drilling lobby and many, like Jorge Chávez, the president of the National Association of Geologists, support lifting the country’s moratorium on oil exploration and extraction.
“Of course we think that renewable energy is better, but if we are going to be stuck using hydrocarbons for 40 or 50 years, why don’t we at least see if we have them in our own country or not?” Chávez says.
Proponents of renouncing fossil fuels view oil exploration as a step backwards. They argue that developing an electric transportation model that relies on Costa Rica’s wealth of renewable energy would require less effort, carry fewer costs and have more benefits in the long run than drilling.
“The era of carbon is over,” says Marcela Guerrero, a lawmaker with the ruling Citizen Action Party. “Because most of our electricity already comes from renewables, Costa Rica can go through the process of eliminating fossil fuels much faster than other countries can.”
[READ: Costa Rica among the Best Countries for Adventure.]
Though not all Costa Ricans are ready to open the country up for oil drilling, for those who spend their weekdays trapped in San José’s epic traffic jams, the viral videos touting Costa Rica’s green record often seem far from the reality of the last several decades.
But while many Costa Ricans doubt the country’s ability to reduce its emissions, there is overwhelming support for stepping up efforts to try. According to a 2015 climate change opinions survey by World Wide Views, 81 percent of Costa Ricans said that not enough was being done to address climate change. While the majority respondents from the rest of the world emphasized the importance of global initiatives, most Costa Ricans wanted to see changes at home.
Some change is already happening. Dozens of advocacy groups from cyclists to urban planners have emerged in San José in the last several years, pushing for transportation reform and the abandonment of fossil fuels.
Costa Rica Sin Petroleo has even caught on within the transportation sector, with the campaign convincing the National Chamber of Bus Drivers (CANABUS) to begin testing the country’s first electric buses and to promote them in its trade magazine.
“We are trying to foster a spirit of change here in our country,” says Luis Diego González, a member of the CANABUS board of directors. “Our goal is to leave hydrocarbons behind and start thinking about a future with clean transportation.”
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In Costa Rica, a Growing Movement to Ban Fossil Fuels originally appeared on usnews.com
