AMAC Exclusive – By B.C. Brutus
As the death toll from the Maui wildfires has continued to mount, so too has liberal alarmism about how climate change is supposedly responsible for the disaster. But a growing body of evidence suggests that it is the left’s “green” political agenda which actually bears the blame for the scope of the devastation in Hawaii as well as blazes in other states in recent years.
Following the complete destruction of the town of Lahaina earlier this month that left over 100 dead and hundreds more missing, the New York Times proclaimed, “climate change turned lush Hawaii into a tinderbox. The Washington Post similarly claimed that climate change is “fueling stronger hurricanes” and “creating drier conditions,” while CNN asserted a “human-caused climate crisis has exacerbated the hot and dry conditions that allow wildfires to ignite” and NBC News declared “climate change is intensifying wildfires.”
But a Wall Street Journal report last week pointed to a much different reason for why the fires were so deadly – the liberal obsession with fomenting a “green revolution.”
As the Journal revealed, an analysis from Hawaiian Electric released following the 2019 wildfire season found that the company needed to do far more to prevent sparks from power equipment and implement more effective mitigation measures for when fires did break out, like clearing highly flammable grasses from around power lines.
But the company invested just $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects between 2019 and 2022 – in large part due to laws passed in Honolulu. In 2015, Hawaii became the first state to mandate that power companies move to a 100 percent renewable model, requiring that the shift be complete by 2045.
Mina Morita, a former chair of state’s utilities commission, told the Journal that as a result of the push for renewables, “While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”
Doug McLeod, a former consultant for the Maui County energy commissioner, added, “Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side and the utility was going out for bid [sic] with all these big renewable-energy projects… But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.”
Although the exact cause of the recent blazes in Maui has not yet been determined, mounting evidence suggests Hawaiian Electric’s equipment was likely involved. At least one video that went viral on social media appeared to show downed power lines igniting grasses just east of Lahaina.
As journalist Michael Shellenberger pointed out on Twitter, Maui isn’t the first time liberals have run this play.
Back in 2018, wildfires in California burned nearly two million acres, leveled the town of Paradise, and left 100 people dead – the most for a single season in the state’s history. Again, the left insisted that climate change was responsible for the destruction. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “this is what climate change looks like” along with a photo of one of the blazes. The Washington Post declared that what happened to Paradise would soon be the fate of many other communities as a result of human-caused climate change.
But it was later revealed that the cause of the inferno was crumbling equipment belonging to Pacific Gas & Electric – the nation’s largest utility company. In 2020, the company, already in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, entered a guilty plea accepting responsibility for the 84 deaths in the town of Paradise and admitting “our equipment started that fire.”
Again, liberal government policies played a role in the disaster. The Democrat supermajority in Sacramento had for years forced PG&E to devote resources to transitioning to renewable energy, siphoning money away from projects like wildfire prevention.
This pattern is continuing today. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who upon taking office in 2019 declared fighting wildfires to be one of his top priorities, has actually dramatically reduced the state’s fire prevention budget. According to a 2021 report from a California NPR affiliate, Newsom has “slashed roughly $150 million from Cal Fire’s wildfire prevention budget” and has “done just 13 percent of the job he’s touted on his highest priority projects.”
For the left, wildfires are just another opportunity to “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Even though the evidence suggests it is the left’s “green” agenda that has made wildfires more common and more deadly, Democrats insist that every American must embrace that same green agenda to reduce the frequency of deadly wildfires. Meanwhile, common-sense actions like better forest management, upgrading power equipment, and improving fire safety practices have fallen by the wayside.
The losers in this situation are the American people – lied to and neglected by the individuals charged with serving them. The question is, how much more abuse are they willing to take?
B.C. Brutus is the pen name of a writer with previous experience in the legislative and executive branches.
