Climate Team Urges Funding Sources, Better Planning for Destructive Disasters
The fires raging across Southern California are predicted to cause $250 billion in losses and could become the most expensive fires in U.S. history.
The devastating blazes in Los Angeles County come just months after Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton hit the southeast states. Each storm is estimated to have caused $50 billion in damages, much of which will not be covered by insurance.
Meanwhile, Hawaiʻi is still contending with the aftermath of the 2023 Maui wildfires. Gov. Josh Green said last August that the recovery effort will likely “exceed $12 billion.”
The Climate Advisory Team, convened by Green last year, is urging the state to prepare for this new reality in which climate-fueled disasters are more destructive and more frequent.
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“What we most want to convey is the urgency of taking action. And we have to find the resources wherever we can,” said Chris Benjamin, chair of the Climate Advisory Team.
The team is proposing what they call a “conservative down payment” of close to $2 billion into two separate funds. The first fund will go towards climate resilience projects, and the second fund will be used to make direct $20,000 payments to households affected by future disasters.
Denise Antolini, also a member of the Climate Advisory Team, says that the second fund will be designed to specifically assist vulnerable populations.
“There are limits to what we anticipate the payouts will be, and so it's not just kind of every disaster, every person,” she said.
Where will the funds come from?
The team has suggested a range of ways to finance those funds, including levying an environmental stewardship fee on visitors who access public lands. The governor has been pushing for such a fee since taking office, but lawmakers have yet to go for it.
Antolini thinks this session will be different from years past.
“Last year, after Lahaina, understandably, everyone was focused on the immediate disaster.” she said, “But this really is the year to set the foundation for both resilience, pre-disaster and post-disaster recovery... So I think this is going to be a top priority for the Legislature.”
At a state Senate hearing on climate policy on Tuesday, Sen. Mike Gabbard, who chairs the Committee on Agriculture and the Environment, expressed support for a new stewardship fee, as well as surprise that lawmakers have yet to pass the measure.
Gabbard expects that tourists would be willing to pay a fee to help preserve Hawaiʻi’s ecosystems.
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“I've been talking with tourists who come here, whether family or non-family members, and they’re saying it's a no-brainer,” Gabbard said.
In addition to the stewardship fee, the Climate Advisory Team has also suggested the state explore using the interest from the rainy day fund or raising the transient accommodations tax or the barrel tax on oil imports to fund climate efforts.
Although not one of their formal recommendations, Benjamin and Antolini also think that the state could leverage a possible windfall from major climate litigation working its way through the courts.
Banking on lawsuits against oil companies
The City and County of Honolulu, alongside Maui County, is suing several oil companies on the grounds that they misled the public about the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the oil companies to block Honolulu’s lawsuits, and the cases should now have a clear path to go to trial.
If such suits are successful, the oil industry may have to pay out billions of dollars in damages. The Climate Advisory Team thinks the state should get in on that action.
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“We've recommended that the state consider joining the lawsuit,” Benjamin said. “That could be a very important funding source for the kind of work that we're advocating because it deals directly with the impacts of climate change.”
Richard Wallsgrove, co-director of the environmental law program at the UH William S. Richardson School of Law, thinks that idea has merit.
“I presume that the type of damages being alleged in Honolulu and Maui are felt statewide,” Wallsgrove said. “If the defendants in these cases are responsible for the damages as alleged in the Honolulu and Maui cases, it seems logical that the state will want to press the same argument, and make sure that those who are responsible are going to solve the problem.”
Calls for a statewide resilience agency
To assist in administering the climate resilience and disaster preparedness funds, as well as in carrying out other recommendations in their report, the Climate Advisory Team is proposing the creation of a new state-level entity called the Hawaiʻi Resilience Office.
“The counties have done a great job in establishing resilience offices, and we think that the state also should have a permanent resilience office,” Benjamin said. “It would be an opportunity to have someone at the highest levels of the state wake up every day thinking about resilience.”
State Rep. Nicole Lowen, who chairs the Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection, said that a new Hawaiʻi Resilience Office is worth considering, but may not be necessary. She pointed out that there are already several agencies tasked with climate and disaster preparedness.
“I think there's a need to coordinate this [effort], but whether that's accomplished by creating a new entity to add to the long list of entities already, I don't know,” Lowen said. “It could just be more bureaucracy.”