Climate activists are getting people killed
Conn Carroll
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It is a heavy charge to blame a movement for a tragedy like the wildfires that killed at least 100 people in Maui, but the more information we get about what started the fire and how it spread, it sure seems like climate activists and their Democratic Party minions are the reason people died.
The Wall Street Journal reports today that Hawaiian Electric knew for years that the combination of unsecured power lines and invasive dry brush was causing a huge spike in wildfires, but instead of investing resources in securing power lines and clearing brush, the company spent millions trying to meet Democratic Party-created renewable energy mandates instead.
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“The growing risk of wildfire on Maui had been known for years,” the WSJ reports. “The number of acres burned on the island soared to 39,000 in 2019, from 150 in 1999.”
The cause of the spike in fires was well documented. “Roughly one-quarter of state land in Hawaii is now covered by invasive grasses and shrubs,” the WSJ reports, and those grasses are known to be highly flammable.
After the 2019 wildfire season, Hawaiian Electric even commissioned a report, which concluded that the utility should do far more to prevent its power lines from setting invasive grasses on fire. Since that report less than $245,000 was spent on wildfire projects.
Instead, the utility spent millions trying to meet a 2015 mandate created by Democrats that would require 100% of the utility’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045.
Because of the Democratic Party’s obsession with climate change, Hawaiian Electric devoted all its resources to renewable energy and next to nothing towards wildfire suppression. And now over 100 people are dead as a direct result.
“You have to look at the scope and scale of the transformation within [Hawaiian Electric] that was occurring throughout the system,” former utility commissioner Mina Morita said. “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
You can see this same misguided focus on the mainland. Just this month, a far-Left judge in Montana ruled that the state legislature violated the state constitution by forbidding government agencies from taking climate change into account when approving permits for construction projects.
If Montana would only stop approving infrastructure projects which caused more carbon emissions, the judge reasoned, then climate change would stop, and the children who sued the state could ski again.
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This is, of course, ridiculous. If Hawaii and Montana magically switched to 100% renewable energy tomorrow it would have zero impact on the climate. Zero.
By focusing entirely on trying to stop climate change, and completely ignoring, even downplaying, efforts to adapt to climate change, climate activists and their Democratic Party lackeys are leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to disasters like the one that happened on Maui.