The exact cause of what happened in West Maui that killed at least 36 people is multiple, but there is no denying that climate change significantly contributed to the firestorm that engulfed Lahaina, obliterating the city. Lahaina is an old city built with wood; it was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom until the reign of Kamehameha, who, after conquering Oahu, eventually moved the capital to Honolulu.
He was born Kalani Pai’ea Wohi o Kaleikini Keali’kui Kamehameha o ‘Iolani i Kawiwikapu kaua’i Ka Liholiho – and once Oahu fell, all the Hawaiian Islands were united under him in 1795. The world knows him as King Kamehameha. He was born and raised on the Island of Hawaii, and his new kingdom was recognized by European governments. The United States was a major trade partner and was a protector to prevent the islands from British and Japanese hegemony.
Wiki:
In 1887 King Kalākaua was forced to accept a new constitution in a coup by the Honolulu Rifles, an anti-monarchist militia. Queen Liliʻuokalani, who succeeded Kalākaua in 1891, tried to abrogate the new constitution. She was overthrown in 1893, largely at the hands of the Committee of Safety, a group including Hawaiian subjects and resident foreign nationals of American, British and German descent, many educated in the United States.[12] Hawaiʻi was briefly an independent republic until the U.S. annexed it through the Newlands Resolution on July 4, 1898, which created the Territory of Hawaiʻi. United States Public Law 103-150 of 1993 (known as the Apology Resolution), acknowledged that "the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States" and also "that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands, either through the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi or through a plebiscite or referendum."
Hawaii was absorbed into the United States after Hawaiians voted to become a state sixty years after the coup of Queen Lili'Uokalani. To be clear, many native Hawaiians vociferously opposed statehood.
The fire is likely the largest human-caused wildfire in Hawaii’s recorded history.
Vox writes on the climate change link.
Wildfires were once rare in Hawaii, largely ignited by volcanic eruptions and dry lightning strikes, but human activity in recent decades has made them more common and extreme. The average area burned each year in wildfires, which tend to start in grasslands, has increased roughly 400 percent in the last century, according to the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, a nonprofit group.
Part of the problem is that climate change is making Hawaii drier, so it’s more likely to ignite when there’s an ignition event (most Hawaii wildfires are sparked by humans, though the source of the current blazes is unknown). The spread of highly flammable invasive grasses is also to blame. Native to the African savanna, guinea grass and fountain grass, for example, now cover a huge portion of Hawaii, and they provide fuel for wildfires, as Cynthia Wessendorf has written in Hawaii Business Magazine.
These factors are at play today, as is a storm hundreds of miles away. Here’s why these fires have become so intense so quickly.
There are reasons for that, which correspond to what we see in the Mohave and Sonoran wildfires. Introduced grasses by ranchers have taken over large swathes of many ecosystems, including the Hawaiian Islands.
The simplest reason why parts of Maui are burning is that it’s hot and dry — summer is the dry season. And dry, hot weather provides the foundation for extreme wildfires by sucking moisture out of vegetation and essentially turning it into kindling. (That’s partly why the Canada wildfires have been so severe this year, too.)
Zooming out, carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are making the planet hotter and deepening droughts around the world. Hawaii is no exception. Today, there’s less rainfall in 90 percent of the state compared to a century ago, according to the state government.
Hurricanes are becoming larger, and the wind fields are expanding: Hurricane Dora combined with drought-enhanced wildfires and non-native plants and a city built of wood combined to make a combination that was lethal.
Trade winds are a normal feature of Hawaii’s climate. They’re caused when air moves from the high-pressure system pressure north of Hawaii — known as the North Pacific High — to the area of low pressure at the equator, to the south of the state.
But Hurricane Dora, which passed south of the islands this week, is exacerbating the low-pressure system and increasing the difference in air pressure to create “unusually strong trade winds,” said Genki Kino, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Honolulu.
Hawaii’s state climatologist, Pao-Shin Chu, said he was caught off guard by the impact Dora had from roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) away.
“Hurricane Dora is very far away from Hawaii, but you still have this fire occurrence here. So this is something we didn’t expect to see,” he said.
Strong winds, combined with low humidity and an abundance of dry vegetation that burns easily, can increase the danger of wildfire, even on a tropical island like Maui.
Inside Climate newsletter on fossil fuel reparations for disaster. We already subsidize these fuckers for trillions of dollars. Make them pay for impacts such as the obliteration of Lahaina from the face of the earth.
One of the most contentious climate policy debates revolves, unsurprisingly, around money. Who should pay the monumental sums needed to protect against extreme weather and transition to clean energy, particularly because the damage has been caused by fossil fuel pollution from the rich, while the costs will be borne disproportionately by the poor?
Add to that a disparity in time: Older people have enjoyed the benefits of burning fossil fuels. The youth and unborn will suffer the harms.
While much of the focus is on having wealthy governments pay their fair share, a new study argues that fossil fuel companies should pay “climate reparations,” too.
In a peer-reviewed paper published Friday in One Earth, researchers used data on emissions tied to the world’s 21 top polluting companies to determine just how much, and landed on a total of $5.4 trillion over a period of 26 years. The largest sum would come from Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, which would be responsible for $1.1 trillion, or $42.7 billion per year, followed by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron.