Democratic Hawaii Governor Josh Green has reiterated his claims that the catastrophic Maui fire resulted from climate change.
In an interview on CBS’ Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan, Green suggested that climate change exacerbated the fire’s severity that devastated Lahaina.
Green also pointed to arid conditions and the winds of Hurricane Dora, which he says made the fire worse.
“So just to be clear, when you’re talking about global warming, are you saying that climate change amplified the cost of human error?” Brennan asked.
“Yes, it did,” Green responded.
“And then when the storm winds from Dora, which were that strong, swept it out, it just destroyed everything. So, there are no excuses to ever be made. But there are finite- there are finite resources sometimes at the moment,” the Hawaii Governor said.
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According to an analysis by Cliff Mass, a meteorologist, and professor for the University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, the winds that fanned the flames that destroyed Lahaina appear to have been natural trade winds.
As The Daily Fetched reported last week:
Hawaiian Electric, the utility company whose power line played a role in the Hawaiian fires in Maui, was too focused on green energy development to combat climate change to prepare for the safety of its existing infrastructure.
According to the WSJ, the company said it needed to take more action to ensure that its hardware did not emit sparks after the 2019 wildfire season, which was one of the worst in Maui’s history.
However, the firm did not appear to have done much work before one of its power lines sparked the fires, which killed at least 100 people.
Instead, the firm expended significant resources toward green energy initiatives to fight climate change.
“While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically, the focus was on electricity generation,” Mina Morita, chair of the state utilities commission from 2011 to 2015, told the WSJ.
“I know that there is debate out there whether we should be talking about climate change or not,” Green said during the interview. “Well, let’s be a real world; climate change is here; we are in the midst of it with a hotter planet and fiercer storms.”
Maui’s crisis response agency opted against sounding the emergency siren system.
Herman Andaya, the agency’s leader, defended the move before resigning from his post Thursday amid public and media backlash.
“For perspective, we’ve had six fire emergencies this August; we had six fire emergencies between 1953 and 2003,” Green said during the interview. “That’s how- how fast things are changing.”
“The administration of Governor Josh Green, M.D., is hyper-focused on government response to help the people of Maui get access to water, food, housing, and other very basic life needs,” a spokesperson for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
READ: John Podesta Claims Maui Fires Due to Climate Change, Touts Inflation Reduction Act as Solution
