“It must be white people’s fault” and in great part it is — current white liberals and their equally clueless Hawaiian “natives” (a me ka poʻe Hawaiʻi ʻike ʻole)*
Our condolences to all the victims of this tragedy.
We understand the loss of life was the result of a perfect storm of vulnerability and the fire (however started) advancing at 60 miles and hour from dry winds across a landscape where inhabitants had hardly anywhere to go in time.
We have over the years referred to Stilton Jarlsberg posts (Stilton’s Place) as among our favorites in all of commentary- land. His take on the situation, informed by experience on the islands, is instructive in his classic style. Read it here.
One of his commenters offered an analysis that is consistent with climate authorities we have read and we think likely spot on:
I’m not sure which is worse: “Laid-back” governance or “We’re gonna fix everything!” governance.
My usual retort is “You guys can’t even manage pavement. I have absolutely no reason to believe that you are capable of addressing the bigger problems.”
As to the Maui fires: Over the weekend I took note that the media was beating the “Climate Crisis!” drum, as in “Your SUV and first world living is responsible for this! Shame on you!”.
Actually, humans were somewhat responsible. But it wasn’t the climate. It was the decline of agriculture on the islands that has allowed formerly managed acreage to go fallow to be taken over with invasive grasses that grow quickly when it rains, but dry out and become highly flammable within hours of any dry spell. And as @Stilton points out, this has been identified as a problem for some time now, but nobody had taken any steps to address it.
Of course, there is also the weather, but it has nothing to do with spewing out CO2. Last year, we had a volcano that spewed literally trillions of gallons of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. Whereas CO2 is a mediocre greenhouse gas, water vapor is a very potent one. In fact, last year NASA predicted rising temperatures due to this, which of course the media immediately flushed down the inconvenient memory hole.
It’s also an El Nino year, where the Pacific ocean belches its stored up heat. Oh, and we’re headed towards the peak of a very active solar cycle.
But until Progressives figure out a way to hold you responsible for volcanoes, El Nino, or the Sun, they’ll continue to harass you over our gas stoves.
John the Econ’s comments were quickly accentuated by:
A little extension of what John the Econ said, re: invasive grasses. When the fires first started, I read an article at CNN that essentially blames white people for this. See, the big bad greedy destructive capitalist patriarchy came to Hawaii and planted sugar cane, coconuts, pineapples etc. When the market for these things dried up, the white farmers left, and the bad “introduced” grasses moved in. No mention was made that all of this nice well cared for farmland could have been used for local crops by the slothful natives.
*Having a little fun with Google translate
