Lahaina on My Mind
On Maui, capitalism as fire, and untended land
Dear friends,
The fires hit Maui as I was sending out my last newsletter, and I’ve spent the last two weeks in a state of heightened vigilance and intermittent grief.
I grew up on the Island of Hawaii (the Big Island), and on clear days we could see Maui’s Haleakala mountain floating on a bed of clouds. But inter-island travel was rare back then so our nearest island was at once very close and very far away.
The two islands have much in common. They were both home to massive sugar plantations run by descendants of white missionaries and Europeans for nearly two centuries. Much like other plantation systems in the Caribbean and in the American South, the industry was built on racism, exploitation, and subjugation of Native Hawaiians, as well as people from Japan, China, Korea, and the Philippines. Vast sugar cane fields replaced food crops such as sweet potatoes and breadfruit ('ulu).
Then, as the sugar and pineapple production tapered off in the latter part of the 20th century and production moved to places where labor cost less, both islands were radically developed and transformed by tourism. Within my lifetime both islands have gone from places tourists visited to places so dominated by tourism—second homes, golf courses, and vacation rentals—that the local community gets pushed into what marginal spaces remain. There are whole swaths of both islands now owned solely by billionaires and near-billionaires. And, simultaneously, both rental markets have been transformed by Airbnb and VRBO, leaving the majority of local people—many of whom work in the service industry—paying top-dollar for small, often-dilapidated apartments and shacks.
Much has been written about these dynamics over the last few weeks, and the way they shaped the water and land use in ways that, ultimately, fed the fire in Lahaina.
The area’s wetlands dried up over a century ago when the owners of Maui’s massive sugar plantations deforested much of the island and funneled the water that runs from the mountains into ditches, tunnels, and flumes that diverted “over 800 million gallons a day from streams and mountains to the cane fields and their mills.” Access to water has been a contentious battle ever since. The sugar families have retained their water rights and developed their land, while much of the undeveloped land has been covered with highly flammable invasive grasses.
The fires have thrown Maui’s water system into a state of chaos, but even before the fires, a number of majority–Native Hawaiian communities were struggling to get access to water and relying on bottled drinking water—much like they are in farmworker communities up and down California’s Central Valley.
I keep coming back to this: A great deal of the land in West Maui was owned, and some of it was occupied, but much of it had not been truly tended in a long time. There were important, sacred cultural sites there, but they were surrounded by a place that was otherwise largely shaped by modern capitalism. And there’s a way that capitalism in both these forms—the plantation system and today’s relentless tourism—can themselves feel like a rapidly moving, merciless fire.
This lack of tending is common in many of the places that are most vulnerable to climate disasters. But that that land, those place can still be tended.
With her 2005 book Tending the Wild, M. Kat Anderson creates an incredible compendium of the many ways Indigenous Californians cared for the land, water, and sea, and argues that the pristine, “untouched” state of abundance Europeans perceived when they first arrived in the state was not in fact wilderness, but an intentional state of balance shaped by the burning, harvesting, tiling, pruning, sowing, and tending done by countless generations of Indigenous people.
“Tend means to ‘have the care of; watch over; look after,’” writes Anderson. “Thus the word connotes a relationship of stewardship, involvement, and caring very different from the dualistic exploit-it-or-leave-it-alone relationship with nature characterized by Western societies.” This tending is deeply tied to a sense of responsibility—the likes of which many of us alive today have never known.
“The cultures of the Indigenous people…are rooted in a belief that nature has an inherent ability to renew itself to cause the return of the geese, the regrowth of edible bulbs, the germination of next year’s crop of wildflowers,” she writes. “But native peoples also believe that renewal cannot happen in the absence of appropriate human behavior toward nature.”
As the climate crisis brings unprecedented (and sometimes deadly) wind and rain and relentless temperature extremes, we don’t yet know all the ways the land will need to be prepared and made more resilient. But it’s clear to me that some of the work this moment requires is the work of tending—and investing in and standing behind Indigenous leaders, small-scale farmers, and others who have never stopped tending.
Climate News You May Have Missed
Climate disasters offer an opportunity for extremism
Some branches of the white supremacist militia the Oath Keepers are rebranding themselves as “disaster assistance” organizations. Meanwhile, NSC-131—a group of neo-Nazis that calls for New England to secede from the U.S.—turned out to help vulnerable people in Vermont after last month’s floods.
What may look to the untrained eye like stepping up to help a neighbor is also a long-established, and concerning trope: extremists looking to grow their ranks have long seen disaster as opportunities. And this year’s smorgasbord of (un)natural disasters and the lagging government response is providing ample opportunities for people with dangerous, violent agendas to grow their influence among those who feel abandoned by the powers that be.
In the case of the Maui fires, it’s not clear whether these patterns are repeating themselves on the ground, but there’s something similarly opportunistic unfolding in the form of a wide range of conspiracy theories that pin the fires on everything from high-energy lasers to Oprah’s effort to further buy up the island in a way that stokes climate denial and Qanon-style narratives. I spent an evening this week following a number of these threads down the rabbit hole in an effort to understand why they have thousands, and in some cases, millions of views. I’ll never get those hours of my life back, but what struck me about the many memes and grainy, doctored videos was the willingness of so many to believe in just about anything other than the confluence of once-unlikely factors brought on by climate crisis. And I understand; the truth in this case might be more frightening than even the most intricate fiction.
The youth climate lawsuits ahead
The young plaintiffs who sued the state of Montana for extracting fossil fuels and thereby violating their right to a “clean and healthy environment” according to the state’s constitution and won earlier this month are likely just the first group like it to wage such a battle. Although the nonprofit behind the case has been filing similar lawsuits in every state since 2010, there are four others that may go to trial in the coming years.
In Hawaii, 14 young plaintiffs are suing the state department of transportation and the case will be heard in court next summer. (These are moving portraits of some of the youth involved.) In Virginia, a case brought by 13 plaintiffs against the state was tossed out last fall, but the young people plan to appeal. In Utah seven plaintiffs are suing the government for “harming the health and safety of Utah’s youth and substantially reducing their lifespans," by failing to regulate fossil fuel development. Although that case was also thrown out, the plaintiffs have succeeded in appealing and a court case is imminent. Meanwhile, in a long-running Oregon case, a group of 21 youth are suing the federal government on similar grounds; in June a federal judge ruled that the case could go to trial nearly a decade after it was filed. Here’s an interview with the kids from 2015 that serves as a time capsule.
Uncharted methane territory
I have a lot of thoughts about beef, cattle, methane, and the climate crisis, and I’ll save most of them for an upcoming newsletter on the topic, but I wanted to share this story about an enormous feedlot in Southern California that Inside Climate News has identified as the largest source of methane in the state—larger than any oil well, oil refinery, or landfill. In fact, the reporters found, there are only two locations that emit more methane in the country! (Beef’s climate footprint is far larger than any other food because of the methane emitted when cattle burp and when manure breaks down.) And yet neither state nor federal regulators are tracking the feedlot’s emissions in their databases.
Funding whose transition?
What do you get when you combine a growing sense of global alarm over the climate with a national budget larger than most of us can even imagine? A new global fund aimed at developing “climate transition projects around the globe, ranging from greener cement-making to clean energy to electric vehicle charging infrastructure” worth upwards of $25 billion.
I have written about—and balked at—the fact that Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. will be leading the upcoming United Nations’ COP28 climate talks. Now, as the talks draw near, the United Arab Emirates is reportedly considering throwing it’s own seed money at the problem in a big way. But it’s looking likely that rather than pay to prepare the developing world for the impacts of climate change or help poorer nations transition to renewable energy, the fund, which will be lead by a former World Bank official, could end upmainly in the hands of the countries responsible for the bulk of global emissions.
Bright spots
1. Nearly 60 percent of voters in Ecuador don’t want to see oil drilling take place in Yasuni National Park, an important, still-intact portion of the Amazon.
2. India has taken the first major step to electrifying its buses by committing $7 billion in initial funding for what promises to be a massive project. The plan is to build a fleet of 50,000 electric buses in 170 cities. In total, after adding individual and commercial vehicles to the equation, the nation hopes to have 80 million EVs on the road by 2030.
3. A group of authors, including Zadie Smith and Ali Smith and led by Michaela Loach, walked out of the Edinburgh Book Festival earlier this month after sending a letter to its organizers demanding that the festival cut ties with sponsor Baillie Gifford, a massive investment firm linked to multiple large fossil fuel projects.
4. I was moved by this lyrical essay on sea mammals, menopause, and the climate crisis by poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs. She writes:
“What if we live on a menopausal planet, where underneath this heat, we are supposed to be learning something about change? What if this is where and when we collectively find the wisdom and maturity that comes from letting go of the story about what we are producing, and moving to the eldership vision of what is sustainable for all of us collectively? What if menopause is the greatest undersung gift? The experience that grants us a multigenerational, multi-species consciousness we need. And what are the words that could reach you and get you to join me in trusting the bravest among us, leaders accountable to multiple generations, who have lived long enough to know what is worth risking and when to risk it?”
5. California is moving to extend its ban on non-functional lawns—the kind no one plays, walks, or sits on—much like the city of Las Vegas has. The LA Times editorial board recently argued for a permanent ban, and two state bills would essentially replace sections of lawns used as landscaping with drought-tolerant native plants. Doing so would save 98 billion gallons or enough water to serve about 900,000 households a year. The LAT piece makes strong points about the importance of urban water, but it’s also just a surprisingly fun read. “Yes, huge, empty lawns watered with sprinklers may make us feel like we’re on a damp English estate in a Jane Austen novel. But we’re not,” reads the editorial. “We’re in 21st century California—increasingly arid but still paradise if we change our ways to be more in line with what nature offers.”
The Visual
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I learned a lot from reading this, thank you T. I am working with an activist right now who is giving a speech and asking “what am I missing?” when she’s speaking to folks experiencing poverty. Learning that nature I see as “untouched” may be deeply and strategically cared for reminded me of that - “what am I not seeing?” A new mantra for me as I look at landscapes.
Love love love the words you shared by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.