Maui fires used to push Biden to declare ‘climate emergency’ – Green New Deal Network: ‘How many more lives lost…is Pres. Biden willing to tolerate before he declares a climate emergency & activates politicians to take further climate action?’

USA Today: Kaniela Ing of Green New Deal Network: ‚ "How many more lives lost or families displaced in communities like mine is President Biden willing to tolerate before he declares a climate emergency and activates politicians to take further climate action?"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/09/how-did-the-maui-fires-start-human-habitation-may-be-partly-to-blame/70559241007/

Kaniela Ing of Green New Deal Network: “How many more lives lost or families displaced in communities like mine is President Biden willing to tolerate before he declares a climate emergency and activates politicians to take further climate action?”

Clay Trauernicht, a professor of natural resources and environmental management at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said it would be misleading to simply blame weather and climate for the blazes.

Instead, Trauernicht, who noted in 2018 that the area burned annually by wildland fire in Hawaii has quadrupled in recent decades, pointed to unmanaged, nonnative grasslands that have flourished in Hawaii after decades of declining agriculture.

“These savannas now cover about a million acres across the main Hawaiian islands, mostly the legacy of land clearing for plantation agriculture and ranching in the late 1800s/early 1900s,” he wrote in a series of posts on the social platform X, formerly Twitter.

“Hawaii’s fire problem could be far, far more manageable with adequate support, planning and resources for fuel reduction projects, agricultural land use and restoration and reforestation around communities and the foot of our forests,” he wrote.

Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a non-profit based in Waimea on Hawaii Island…”Hawaii has a wildfire problem,” the organization states on its website. “Each year, about 0.5% of Hawaii’s total land area burns each year, equal to or greater than the proportion burned of any other US state. Over 98% of wildfires are human-caused. Human ignitions coupled with an increasing amount of nonnative, fire-prone grasses and shrubs and a warming, drying climate have greatly increased the wildfire problem.”

 

Share: