Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Environment

Okay, welcome everyone to the Joint Informational Briefing with the Judiciary and Agricultural and Environmental Environment Committees. My name is Karl Rhoads. I'm Chair of the Judiciary Committee and also a member of the...committee as well.

On—to my left is Senator Mike Gabbard, Chair of the Agriculture Environment Committee and also a Member of the Judiciary Committee—the Vice Chair, in fact.

So, this Zoom meeting and YouTube live stream event covers the 10:00 AM JDC/AEN informational briefing on the impact and legality of recent federal policy changes and funding delays and cancellations on Hawaii climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. As noted, this briefing is being lived—streamed live—on YouTube.

You can find links to viewing options for all Senate hearings and meetings on the "Live and on Demand" video page of the Legislature's website, www.cap—www.capital.hawaii.gov. In the unlikely event that we must abruptly end the briefing due to major technical difficulties, if a future date can be arranged with the presenters, the committees will reconvene, and the public notice will be posted on the Legislature's website.

Since this is an informational briefing, only the invited speakers will provide testimony to the committees. There will not be any public testimony, though members of the public are always welcome to contact my office or any other of the Senator's office, on the—on the committees.

Committee Members will ask—will ask you to hold your questions until the end, unless there's a presenter who needs to leave early and my guidance is to keep the questions and answer portions to five minutes per member.

Briefing materials from today's presenters are linked from a briefing notice and will also be posted online at the Senate JDC web—JDC Committee page. These can be accessed on the Legislature's website. Same—capital.hawaii.gov. Now, to the focus of today's briefing.

Today's briefing focuses on Hawaii's climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts and how the recent federal policy changes, funding delays, and funding cancellations have interfered and—interfered with—and impacted the state.

This is the fifth brief—briefing—we've held over the interim, in a series to explore the rule of law and the local impact of actions that have been taken by our President and the Federal Government. The reach of the Federal Government on Hawaii's climate change efforts is wide ranging.

There have been abrupt cancellations and delays of grants and research projects that have addressed and studied climate change, such as the Mauna Loa Laboratory that has measured atmospheric carbon dioxide since the 1950s. For some projects, the state is currently in litigation over the funding termination.

Additionally, the President has called on the Department of Justice to block states from enforcing climate change laws and has preemptively sued the State of Hawaii to try to block it from filing a lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.

There have also been severe cuts to Hawaii based staff of federal agencies, environmental agencies, like the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency that address climate change.

Some of these actions appear, to me, to be of dubious legality, of course, in the background, as a President who seems to be doing all he can nationally and globally to undo Hawaii's environmental and climate change progress.

This is most evident by his continued efforts to move forward to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement, notably in 2017 after the election of President Trump to his first term in his initial statements about withdrawing from the agreement, Hawaii passed a law to align the state's goals with the Paris Climate Accord, the first state in the country to do so.

So, we will be looking at those issues today. I appreciate my co-chair, Senator Gabbard, for agreeing to hold this briefing.

We both extend our mahalo to retired Hawaii Supreme Court Justice, Michael Wilson, and the State Climate Change Coordinator, Leah Laramie.

I note that for a couple of years I sat on the Climate Change Commission when I was Senate Water and Land Chair, but Senator Gabbard, as the Ag and Environmental—Environment—Chair, has been on the Commission since its inception in 2017.

Chair Gabbard, do you have—would you like to make some comments?

Sure. Thank you, Chai. Aloha mai kako, and good morning and thank you for being here today.

Mahalo to our presenters and also to our community partners and everyone here and online who are committed to ensuring that Hawaii continues moving forward in dealing with our climate change crisis with urgency and accountability. And so, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm—January 21st is when our next session starts.

It'll be my 10th year as the Chair of the Ag Environment Committee, so I'm looking forward to working with you all. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. First up, we have Leah Laramee, Coordinator, Hawaii Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Commission. And there is a clicker that we think is working so you can direct your PowerPoint as you wish. Floor is yours.

Aloha, Senator Rhoads, Senator Gabbard. Appreciate you having me here today. You know, it's, it has been a roller coaster of a year as we've all experienced with some low-lows and some high-highs.

And I just, you know, want to start off with just the real appreciation that we have for the support from the Legislature, as well as our Attorney General's offices in ensuring that we're protected both by ratifying the Paris Agreement within our laws and by continuing the efforts to fight the good fight against some of these more illegal actions by the Federal Government.

So, I want to start off by saying we're here talking about climate change, but really what that means is impacts on health, safety, and affordability for Hawaii. We often forget the real intricate connectivity of climate change and the impacts it will have on those three topics.

You know, we're going to see huge shifts in how our weather patterns are happening. We're already having extreme heat. You know, it's been very, very warm. We're into November and we're still in the 80s. That has huge impacts on human health, safety.

We're going to see more extreme weather happening that, you know, impacts folks that we unfortunately saw the hurricane happening in the Caribbean taking several deaths. We had the impacts of the wildfires in Lahaina, devastating over 100 deaths with that.

And also, the affordability. Renewable energy really promises—and energy efficiency efforts—really promise to make energy more affordable for us in Hawaii, as well as electrification of transportation, the increase of public transportation. Hawaii is already a very expensive place.

So, all of these actions that the Federal Government are taking are really going to have a negative impact on our ability to make Hawaii more affordable. So, our AGs have just been rock stars. They have taken 41 actions on environmental and climate issues since January.

The top line here is that when the Hawaii AGs filed the lawsuit against oil companies alleging deception conducting leading to the climate crisis, so basically, oil companies covering up that their products are leading to the climate crisis.

I've added a few other ones here. Ones that I wanted to point out is the AG's filing a lawsuit against environmental justice and block group program cuts as well as dismantling the AmeriCorps Program. That is one that really impacted my team personally and thank you to the AGs for getting that reinstated.

Now that we still have our AmeriCorps vistas helping us, that's, you know, youth from Hawaii and around the country that are helping us to make a huge difference, and you know, this is their first opportunity to serve as civil servants, so it was really devastating when those grants got canceled. But happily, they're reinstated now.

Sorry, technical difficulties.

Yeah, give more time for folks to look at all these various ones. It's not on this.

Ryuko, can you? We can't get the, the PowerPoint to come up.

The PowerPoint. It's the okay button.

It's the okay button at the top we can't seem to reach. Okay.

It's fine.

I think it'll switch now.

Okay. Yeah. We're also experiencing federal layoffs, so U-HERO study estimated there'll be potentially 2,000 federal jobs lost due to reductions in funding costs. This has, you know, impacts down the line of, you know, impacting our ability to do any monitoring and research.

The funding uncertainty for, you know, a lot of other programs that benefit from these federal agencies, reduce oversight and support, workforce impacts. There's not going to be jobs in Hawaii. It's going to be harder to keep people at home working and the community and social impact, right, that these programs provide a lot of technical assistance and support for our communities.

So, as we see the loss of these jobs, we'll also see all of these impacts as well. The HR 1, the Big Beautiful Bill Act had, you know, widespread impacts on us.

And I'll obviously focus on the climate change impacts, but this really will increase Americans' energy costs, kill energy and manufacturing jobs, hurt our grid reliability.

And you know, we have, this is maybe an older number, but we had about $651 million of outstanding energy projects that are at risk because of the loss of these federal programs and support and new regulations that, that threaten to limit our ability to implement these. So, it's a significant investment that is threatened in the state.

The tax credits are that, you know, a lot of residents in Hawaii rely on, have either already expired, so the purchase of EV vehicles expired at the end of September. That's new, unused vehicles. And there's a number of other tax credits that are planning on expiring at the end of this year.

As you can see, you know, this can save thousands of dollars for people just in the tax credits alone, but all of these technologies will save, you know, hundreds to thousands of dollars in the lifetime of, of the installation. So, this really is an affordability issue for people across the state.

Just on those tax credits, the US Climate Alliance came up with a number of recommendations for that the state can take in order to ensure that our tax credits or that our kuma ina are taking advantage as much as possible of these tax credits.

I know the Energy Office a lot of work as well as Hawaii Energy to ensure that we take these actions. You know, streamlining with permitting is a really huge one and something that we're continually trying to work on in coordination with the counties.

But it's really important that we do as much as possible to ensure that we take advantage of these tax incentives before they expire. So, the Big Beautiful Bill also has a lot of impacts on regulatory and programmatic, on energy and transportation.

It basically allows projects to buy expedited NEPA review, which you know, would definitely mean that those projects that have more funding would not have as in depth and thorough NEPA review, and they examine corporate average fuel economy, CAFE penalties, so this is really the enforcement looks at fuel standards.

So, it eliminates the ability for the CAFE standards to enforce looking at fuel standards. It mandates increased offshore and onshore oil, gas, and coal leasing, so we're going to see more drilling for oil, which obviously will release more carbon into the atmosphere and expedite our impacts of climate change.

Increases fees for renewable energy products on public lands, making it harder for us to do renewable energy projects. Repeal statutory authority and rescinds unobligated balances for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund Program, which comes out to like about $27 billion.

So, a lot of funding and work that was put out there to ensure that we're reducing our greenhouse gas emissions are being rescinded. One of the biggest ways we're feeling that is the termination of the Solar for All Program. This program was repealed in August. Hawaii was expected to receive $62.5 million.

It, you know, this is one of the areas where it can't lawfully be canceled by the Federal Government unilaterally. The grants are obligated, and funds have fully executed agreements. So, this, you know, as we understand it, the Big Beautiful Bill did not rescind obligating funds, so hopefully, we will be able to get these funds back, but it's still considered canceled at this point in time.

And the program's really expected to save low income and disadvantaged households over 350 million annually in electric bills. And five lawsuits were filed challenging EPA's decision to terminate the program in October. There's additional impacts. We're sending natural and working land funds.

The USDA Agricultural Conservation Programs have really taken a pretty heavy hit. They've recent unobligated funds for competitive grants for forest owners, urban and community forest assistance and forest legacy funds have been retained. National parks, public land conservation resilience, ecosystem restoration programs. All of those unobligated funds have rescinded, rescinded Endangered Species Recovery Plan funding.

Rescinds NOAA funding for coastal climate resilience, oceanic atmosphere research, and forecasting weather and climate programs, and in requiring increased timber sales from our public lands. Again, one of the biggest impacts we're seeing here in Hawaii is from the Carbon Smart Commodities Program.

This was a program that Hawaii, through various different programs, was looking at receiving $240 million in federal funding. Specifically, we had one going through the University of Hawaii by a linker for $40 million that was working with land managers throughout the state to really invest in climate smart practices.

But really, this meant food security, climate friendly agriculture, planting food forests, invasive species management, and improving soil health. So, this is not just about the climate smart aspects, this is really about food security within the state, and that's been rescinded.

This is—next couple slides are just the various rescission of unobligated fund balances that you can see. 9 billion in loan programs that would really help us on utility scale, large scale energy projects, various projects that would help with assistance for converting buildings for energy efficiency programs that help with low-income folks and energy affordability.

Same with US DOT programs. We talked about the USDA programs, as well as NOAA programs and HUD programs as well. EPA has quite a number of programs that unobligated balances are being rescinded and you know, some of these are going to have pretty significant impacts on public health, including you know, school air pollution monitoring.

These programs have really ensured that, you know, our youth are attending schools where the air is clean. And without these, we'll no longer be able to measure or implement actions that will help to protect our keiki. Okay. Unfortunately, these are not showing all of the shovel ready and wind and solar projects.

There's a cool graph here that would show which ones are planned for. But basically, the message here is that, you know, this is nationwide but also within Hawaii. There's a number of planned projects that haven't gone through all of the necessary permitting and regulatory approvals.

And because of that, we're not going to meet some of the deadlines for some of the federal support and federal tax credits, so that means this pretty significant loss in renewable energy investment in the state. And on that happy note, mahalo.

Thank you very much. If you can, are you able to stay around? Okay, great. And we'll go ahead and go to Justice Wilson's presentation, and we'll have some questions for you both at the end if that's okay. If that's okay with you too, Chair.

Justice Wilson, I haven't seen him.

...The father of the Environmental Court. Thank you for everything.

So aloha. And that is something that I have said every single time I've given a presentation

Going to need for the rest of the world to hear. You're gonna have to have that mic a lot closer to your mouth too.

All right, thank you. Yeah, that's something that I've said in every presentation in the last two years or so since I retired, in various places around the world, which I'll refer to in the course of this testimony, because going to Asia, Europe and the Legislature, which I'll get to, along with our Governor, the rule of law that we're talking about, and particularly with respect to how the federal policy is affecting the rule of law, is often considered to be the most powerful tool for justice and civilization.

And right now it's definitely receiving a great challenge. And in Hawaii, it's under attack. So the three points of discussion that I wanted to focus on is that the State of Hawaii is the bleeding front line of climate change and the foremost champion among all states of climate rights for the future generations of our country.

We may not think of ourselves that way, but actually in terms of comparison, I think it's very true.

And the giant fossil fuel corporations, everything that Leah, who is a stalwart champion for Hawaii and the environment, all that she is contending with, when you look at the broad policy, it's just in the hands fortunately of a few entities. And I'll get to that.

But we, I think, can get to a solution once we get the fossil fuel companies on board because they are the ones that rule, R U L E. They rule internationally and they pose the greatest threat to the environmental rule of law in Hawaii. And I'll get to that. Donald Trump won't be there forever.

So it's important to understand that while he is, as an elected official, certainly the greatest threat to Hawaii's future generations and the Earth's life sustaining ecosystems. You know, he is in his second term, but the fossil fuel companies are permanent. Okay.

And this is just to share with you every presentation I give, whether it's with the United Nations or whether it's with courts in different countries, or with NGOs and the brave youth plaintiffs around the world and their mothers and lawyers that are bringing these cases.

This is a slide I show to try to give them a perspective about why we of Earth's best resources and what an amazing magical place we are out in the middle of the ocean, the most remote landmass on earth, with the best environment.

And, and of course, this is such an iconic picture and that is the most powerful outdoor experience I ever had. You know, I was at Kailua High School, and I went hiking in there with my friends, and it was just so, well, overwhelming almost.

You know, with the waterfalls coming down to the beach and the beach being so spectacular, and when you're in high school and maybe anytime, it was quite a memorable experience because everybody was naked. Yeah, that really stuck. My brother was with me, so we remarked about that. Anyways, and these are the treasures of Hawaii.

People everywhere like to see these treasures. It's sad that we're certainly going to lose our birds, but, I mean, when the Earth gets up to 3 degrees, maybe the dolphins and the whales will be okay. They're so smart, but they're certainly going to be challenged. And I just wanted to invite both of you to my beach house.

This is where it is. And I don't think you've been there yet, so hopefully we can get there. But that's coral, and that's definitely something that's going to be. 70% of it's supposed to be gone when we get to three degrees. Okay.

So the idea of there being a climate emergency is something naturally, that was formally addressed back in 2015 with the Paris Agreement. And since then, there's been a report, it was in 2023 by the United Nations, explaining how things have gone. So there are strong words being used by the United Nations like calamity.

We're at the brink of calamity now, and this is why. And from a legal point of view, this is critical. This is the greatest emergency humanity has ever faced, you know, because the solution horizon, in other words, the amount of time we have to solve the problem is quite limited, probably less than 10 years.

1.5 degrees is where we identify an existential threat. When I say we, I mean the United nations has, their lawsuits that have resulted in decisions, have recognized 1.5 degrees. And certainly the consensus among scientists is that that is a threshold point. Actually, we're going to 3 degrees.

That will be the temperature that's likely to be reached during the lifetime of the children of the people in this room. This is a pretty powerful statement that was made by the Director General. That's kind of summed things up. He was comparing the pandemic to the climate change.

And he said, obviously, the pandemic, the COVID pandemic, was a threat to humanity, but he said it pales in comparison to what's coming. And he also spoke about what has happened since all of our COPs and the 2015 Paris Agreement.

And his point was, we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator from the lead diplomat in the world, that's really strong language. Hell, climate hell.

If the public wants to get an idea what's happening in Hawaii in the future, they can go to the climate change portal and see that 70% of our beaches and 4,000 structures in the state are threatened.

And it goes into more detail about how the roads are going to fall into the ocean and we're going to lose waikiki. So in 40 or 50 years, regardless of how many seawalls we build, at present rate of global warming will be losing $2 billion a year in visitor expenditures because of the flooding of Waikiki.

So the idea of policy, certainly in the United States, the climate policy would loom large for Hawaii as much as any other state.

And our chief climate scientist has made the point that while global warming and the associated sea level rise is an existential threat to Hawaii because of obvious reasons, we just talked about a greater threat, which is harder to see, is what's coming with extreme weather events because the hurricanes are moving in closer to Oahu and they're getting stronger.

So if we get a class four or five hurricane, well, we all know what happened on Kauai. But a Class 4 or 5 hurricane will blow all the windows out in Waikiki and it will paralyze our island. And then we have to get men dealing with young people around the world or teaching.

I do teach at the University of Hawaii and been teaching in India. You know, a committed young person who wants to do something about climate change will eventually ask the question, well, what's the plan? What are we supposed to do? And it's interesting that there isn't a plan.

I mean, if you were in charge of a corporation and you wanted to have somebody be a President or a Chief Executive to return the company to profitability, and they said, I'm going to return the company to profitability and had no plan, obviously they wouldn't have any credibility.

It's interesting that we do recognize we have this existential emergency, but there's no climate plan. And of course, that applies to Hawaii, too. We don't have an overall plan to decide what we're going to do about adaptation and mitigation. There are efforts underway to attempt to do that.

But to understand what we're going to do about geothermal, understand what we're going to do about wind, what we're going to do about alternative energy systems is to understand that it's difficult. There's so much community conflict. But if we did put together, because we, I mean, I'm speaking to the converted.

I know, but if you look at internationally, we have so much talent here. We could develop, with Chip Fletcher says, $1 million. You could put together a plan, and it could be a plan that also is helpful for the population at large in the Earth. But we don't have a climate protection plan yet.

So these are the people in charge or the governance units in charge, the energy companies. Just to start off, giving you a sense in terms of metrics or statistics about the breathtaking power. In 2022, Exxon, the biggest oil company, made $23 billion. That's around the time of the pandemic. The next year, it went to $58.2 billion.

I mean, it takes a lot of study to understand the impact of that level of wealth. But when you look at the consequences, they're able to spend over $100 million a year on lobbying all around the world.

So political scientists are beginning to refer to this group as governance units, not necessarily corporations, because the normal power of a corporation has been exceeded by this group because they don't have any regulations in terms of a political system.

You know, they're not elected, but they have great power when it comes to their wealth and influence just through lobbying and their connections. So the International Energy Agency keeps track of this. This is where these statistics come from. And the industry as a whole made $4 trillion in profits in 2022.

Now, as Leah has said, we're headed for disaster. And greenhouse gas emissions are rising. And we talk about that, but we get distracted from the benefit. There is a celebration going on here as our regulatory controls and regulatory systems are being dismantled by the United States government and greenhouse gas emissions are going up in the future.

Generations are facing this terrible existential threat. There's a celebration going on. There's a community that dismantles strategically the protections for our United States citizens from climate. And part of it has to do with the increasing wealth.

So there is in some ways a very dark but powerful progress that's being made in terms of global wealth. I was just in Dubai. I was there for a conference. I came back three weeks ago. It is a celebration of massive oil wealth with the kind of symbols you would expect.

Giant buildings that have to be air conditioned, the biggest mall that has a ski slope in it. So there's, there's great celebration of wealth. It's just that for purposes of the impacts on Hawaii, we're not Dubai. And it's something that, as Leah said, it's. It's devastating.

Approximately $20 billion is paid to fossil fuel companies annually in direct subsidies by the US Government. That's part of the lawsuit that I'm about to get to. The idea that the United States government should be subsidizing this team of extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs who run the energy is almost not believable.

And so this was generated by my law school class, the class that was Emergency Climate Law and Policy at the University of Hawaii. And it's also been picked up in many places around the world. So on the right, you have the leaders, the giants, the ones that really control this.

And again, it's a fairly small group of really powerful economic entities, but there are groups that aren't giving up, and I'll get to that. But the person on the left, that small representative of indigenous people and future generations, has a gavel, and the gavel represents the rule of law. So there is a chance that we can prevail.

But a lot of it has to do with the rule of law. And the rule of law isn't just in the courts. This is one of the reasons why Hawaii is probably the lead in the United States. How many legislatures have actually formally recognized that there is a climate emergency? Just Hawaii.

I mean, and look at the language. Planet Earth is facing a climate emergency which will take an immense increase of scale and endeavors to avoid untold suffering. I mean, you can't find language like that in other states and legislation. And certainly as

Senator Gabbard rightly knows, much of this language was also the basis for the Environmental Court, which is the only environmental court in the United States, really. I mean, there's one in Vermont, but it's mostly municipal court. And ours is a court that has jurisdiction that's civil and criminal and requires the training of judges.

So in the conferences that take place internationally. And Antonio, Benjamin and I work to create the Global Judicial Institute on the Environment to bring judges together from around the world on environmental issues. But this, this and AI are the most common subjects in international conferences for judges. Climate change and AI.

And as Antonio often says, climate change is the single most important legal issue facing judges globally. AI is one that I think judges enjoy because it has a lot to do with wealth. It has a lot to do with power.

It has a lot to do with the, you know, increase in, if you will, success of the economy. Climate's kind of the opposite. Not a lot of fun for judges because of the reality of what's happening. But judges around the world have been focused on it.

And while the United States Supreme Court is the worst court in the world on this issue, many of the other courts are going with the Hawaii State Supreme Court. So imagine there weren't any climate lawsuits about 20 years ago. Now there are over 2,000 and virtually every one of them represents mothers and children with some exception.

And the most important lawsuit that pertains to climate is in the State of Hawaii right now. But 2,180 cases have arisen in a short time because the legislative and Executive branches have so much difficulty, not necessarily in Hawaii, but throughout the world trying to move forward a climate protection agenda in the face of the giants.

So now we get to the courts. There are a group of judges that have told the truth in the federal courts and they have been shut down. But this is the main case in federal courts that is internationally famous where there was a right to a life sustaining climate recognized.

And this was before our court found the right to a life sustaining climate in Hawaii. And in that she knew what was going to happen when she made that decision. She made this point in her case.

Federal courts too often have been cautious and overly deferential in the arena of environmental law in the world has suffered for it. So she saw what was coming because once it start getting into the federal courts and the case was appealed, she was reversed. And she did find the right to a life sustaining climate made.

The point that's been made by other Supreme Courts in other countries. Now those decisions following this decision that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.

Now, just to segue for a second to slavery, you know, the United States Supreme Court found that slavery was constitutional when it first came before the court because the agricultural era needed slaves. Of course it was atrocity law because there are no facts that suggest that black people are inherently less capable.

And the law also it was atrocity because they misrepresented the law. The United States Constitution has a equal protection clause as well as a right to life.

And so now the idea that in the United States there is no right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life in some ways is like Dred Scott, except the constituency whose rights are being violated far transcends black people. That's a much more discreet group.

Now we're talking about future generations, over 3 billion people, you know, the young people of the world that are, I mean, 3 billion people that are less than the legal age of adulthood. So she was reversed. But interestingly, there was a dissent. This wonderful federal judge whose name is Josephine Staton, and wrote a descent.

It was so beautifully written. The Atlantic magazine picked up on it and wrote an article about it. But she said that it is an absolute violation of the court's duty to not take action. Where they're is theoretically, according to the case, a policy of the United States government to increase fossil fuels.

She said it's as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses. In other words, we have this terrible policy in the United States. It's increasing greenhouse gas emissions. It's destroying the future of not just our planet, but the future for young people.

But this decision by the federal court said young people can't go to court. There is no such right in the United States. So it was very dramatic. And similarly, the dissent was very dramatic. She says, my colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the judiciary. That's not fit for the judiciary.

You can rightfully question, as many of the law professors and commentators around the world are saying, you could question legit legitimacy of our federal courts. Okay, again making the point. Now, this is a very important climate case where the United States Supreme Court majority said that the EPA really doesn't have the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

I know it's really hard to imagine that they came up with such a decision. And so the dissent called this frightening that you don't usually see language like that in Supreme Court decision. She said it was frightening. So the federal courts of the United States are the worst in the world. They pose the greatest threat to humanity of any of the courts in the world. It's atrocity law. As I mentioned.

You know, the idea that there is no legal basis for young people to make a claim for the by the government's violation of their rights with a policy that is increasing greenhouse gas emissions. And these are cases that are certainly Korematsu is well known in this case.

You know, the decision the Supreme Court that it was appropriate to incarcerate all the Japanese people in the United States during World War II. I mean, that was an atrocity. You know, the fact that was false was that all Japanese people are a threat.

And then the legal falsity was that the United States Constitution, with its equal protection clause, wouldn't protect Japanese. Japanese citizens. And of course, that case didn't apply to people that were Japanese immigrants. I mean, Japanese aliens. They were Japanese citizens of the United States.

But here's what's happening in Hawaii and we don't, you know, this is something that's happened organically. We, I don't think this is strategic.

But our state has ended up while it's on the bleeding front line of climate change, as Leah has beautifully articulated, it's the foremost champion among all states of climate rights for the future generations of our country. The Governor, the Legislature and the courts have come together.

If you look again at what the Legislature did, this was very important to our court.

When you decided that there's a climate emergency, we referred to that in terms of recognizing there's a climate emergency and that there has to be a duty on the course of government to protect this right under the right to life provision of our constitution as well as the right to a clean and healthy environment.

So you've got the Legislature. I just mentioned the court decision that we made. And we in our decisions specifically rejected the analysis of the federal court. We rejected the idea that the courts don't have a duty to take action to protect young people, future generations, indigenous people, our population from this existential threat.

And then things have happened throughout the world. It's really exciting. This is the most important court in the world, right? India, the biggest country in the world now, it has the most respected judiciary.

And their Supreme Court found basically what Ann Aiken found, that there's a right to a life sustaining climate under the right to life provision of the Constitution. All constitutions have a right to life provision.

So this idea of a right to a life sustaining climate is rightfully something that's being sought, and it's successfully so in many countries by mothers and children. Mothers and children.

They're the ones that are moving forward on this because their level of climate anxiety and their feeling of institutional betrayal about not being able to get relief from the Executive branch and the legislative branch has caused them to go to court again. This is the thing that this is internationally recognized throughout law schools.

It's also known to the United nations environmental program. This case is a case of powerful hope as much as any in the United States, because, okay, the case gets filed where the young people want to enforce their right to a life sustaining climate.

With respect to transportation, to make sure there's a transportation plan, the state first attacks them. As you may recall, when they took the deposition of one of the plaintiffs, she ran out of the room crying, the Legislature, it gets the Legislature's attention. Legislature says, why are we paying $1.0 million?

Why are you asking for $1 million to pay attorneys from the mainland who come in here and attack the young people and fight this case? So then it gets the governor's attention and he realizes they have a good point, they have a right, and we should work it out. And so the settlement is entered into.

So you have this, in a way, three branches of government, right? You have the Legislature that was asking questions. You had the Governor that saw that there was a need to help the young people.

And then you had the courts, because this is now under the court's jurisdiction for the next 10 years, monitoring what the plan is going to be. Well, it's a great example throughout the world of how government can work in a responsible way.

You know, the nice thing about the courts is it's not a radical approach, because courts are naturally kind of conservative because you have to come back and report to the court. Both sides get a chance to make their point. So it's a pretty healthy place to come to grips on solutions for climate change.

But it was not lost on the giants what's happening in Hawaii. So here is the. The story that's probably the most exciting one going on in the world when it comes to.

...The rule of law and climate. When the, the President of the United States comes to Hawaii to help the giants, this is the case. It's a supernova. You know, supernova, like the most powerful force in the universe or explosion in the universe.

This is a supernova of judicial power because what happened is Mayor Blangiardi and before him, Mayor Caldwell, and now the State of Hawaii, the Governor, have brought actions, fraud actions, against the oil company, saying that they knew when they were selling all these petroleum products that they were going to cause a climate problem and they misrepresented it even though they knew. That's the allegations.

And the idea is just to let the citizens, with their, the mayor and the Governor leading the way, let the citizens make the point, and it would allow a jury trial, which is an important part of this story.

Well, right away there is a law firm that is the most influential, powerful, you could say, in some ways brilliant, law firm maybe in the United States on this issue that of course represents the giants, Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher. They're all over the world. And so, they come here in front of Judge Crabtree of our environmental court—was a great judge. It's before he retired.

And they say, you know, this is just a regulatory case. It is the wolf in sheep's clothing. The State of Hawaii and the city and county Honolulu are just trying to regulate climate policy, which is a federal issue, so it should be dismissed.

He denies that. He allows the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court. Our Hawaii state Supreme Court says he's right, sends it back for a trial. Now imagine this trial, this fraud trial, because—and this is one of the reasons it stands out in the whole world.

If these claims are proven, then punitive damages can be given to the citizens. And when punitive damages become an issue, the wealth of the defendant can be brought before the jury.

So, you could have a jury in a state where, you know, our second largest city burned to the ground and 100 people burned to death, where we're going to lose Waikiki, where people are starting to understand that they've got more threats from hurricanes.

And if they see that this giants, all—if you look at the names of the defendants, it's all the giants of the world. British Petroleum, Exxon, Chevron. All their wealth will come before this jury. And if they think that fraud has been proven, they can issue punitive damages, which are just damages meant to punish.

So, this could be the biggest punitive damages award in history. Okay, so you can see why Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher would not accept the Hawaii State Supreme Court's decision.

So they go to all the red states, all the red attorney generals, and gather them together to appeal to the United States Supreme Court to reverse our Supreme Court, and they file an abacus.

Well, the United States Supreme Court, I could go into more boring detail, but they're twisting and turning trying to figure out how they could take the case, but it would be even worse than reversing Roe v. Wade.

It would be a, I think, just such a controversial atrocity law decision to reverse the decision of a state court on state law, so they reject the request of all the red state attorney generals and send it back to Hawaii, and it's going to go to trial. Again, trial is a huge problem for the defendants.

Then, I'm telling you, this group of lawyers is so brilliant. Then, they organize and go to the President of the United States and say, you know, we've got an energy emergency. This is a climate regulatory case. The State of Hawaii cannot bring this case, and it should be precluded by the federal courts.

So, on behalf of us, the citizens of the United States, Donald Trump orders the Attorney General to file a lawsuit, and now he's come to Hawaii. The lawsuit is in federal court. The lawsuit says that the federal judge has to order the State of Hawaii not to sue the oil company.

If you can imagine, it is the most extreme departure from legal precedent that any President has ever made by far, because it has absolutely no basis. Maybe you could bring some kind of claim and still be frivolous if the case had already been filed, but he was talking about now in all future cases.

So, it gets filed in federal court. Again, the case is sitting in state court. It's going to go to trial, and they use that as an excuse to come to state court. And in federal court, there's a judge who has the case. I'm fairly confident that she's just going to dismiss it eventually.

But the defendant's attorneys, Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, are so resourceful and creative. They come to—back to our environmental court. They come back to the—a new judge. Unfortunately, Judge Crabtree retired. So, there's this new judge. The Governor goes to court, and our Attorney General goes to court. And of course, they block.

They want to block the stay because that's what the defendants are saying, oh, you have to stay the court. The President of the United States has filed this case in federal court. We should stay our state case and see what happens.

I have no question that Judge Crabtree would have listened to our Attorney General and would have listened to the Governor, but this judge decided, for whatever reason, to stay the case, which is a potential problem, you know, because it could mean that there won't be sanctions against the government for filing such a frivolous case.

But that's just state at the Environmental Court level, potentially the Governor can bring this case to the Hawaii Supreme Court to reverse that decision, so we'll see if they do or not. Anyway, so this is what's happening with the, the most important case.

This is a very bold attorney who has had many successes in cases representing municipalities around the country, that is the lead attorney, and the New York Times has written about this situation. And this is why Donald Trump—Trump is the second greatest threat to Hawaii's future generations and earth's life sustaining system.

And these are my last two slides. The solution is pretty easy. A climate protection plan. Now, we could have a climate protection plan put together by Texas. They've got a lot of money, and they have money that is connected to the giants, but they don't—the giants don't want a plan and certainly Texas wouldn't put it together because what we have now works.

It's a great business plan, the best business plan in human history. They are making profits so they don't want a new plan.

But if you look at the value system and the cultural priorities of Hawaii versus almost any other jurisdiction, it makes sense if we could come up with a plan.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Before we start with questions, Ms. Laramie, can you come back up? You had a couple slides that didn't show up correctly and we have those now if you'd like to walk through them, we think.

I think, you know, the slides we're talking about are just looking at the number of projects that are kind of in the pipeline. These are renewable energy projects that are at risk of not receiving certain tax credits or support from the Federal Government. Yeah, we can see here by type.

You know, we have quite a few solar projects, the ones that are in the orange here plan for construction, but regulatory approvals are not initiated, which means that we probably won't hit the marks for those larger tax credits.

And this is, this is nationally, just to clarify, this is not just in the state, but you know, we do fall within these offshore wind projects as well, as well as battery—onshore wind and battery projects.

One of the, the biggest hits to the state is offshore wind turbine projects that we are just starting to have conversations about have basically fallen flat because of the federal regulations and that limits our capacity to produce energy, especially for Oahu, which has the largest energy intensity need.

So, you know, the loss of these projects is going to have pretty significant impacts on our ability to produce affordable energy here locally and impact our energy security. Thanks for the opportunity to share that.

Thank you. You've been writing, so why don't you start. You got some questions there.

Yeah. And we can just go back. Okay, that's fine. Thank you both for your presentations. Yeah. So, starting off with Leah, you had mentioned the solar for all project in one of your slides and that it was like $7 billion total.

The grants that had been stopped and of that 62 and a half million is coming to Hawaii?

Correct. Yeah.

And five lawsuits were filed in October. What's the—how do you see this turning out, and what?

You know, I'm ever hopeful. You know, our AGs have done such a great job at ensuring that obligated funds which are, you know, and legally not able to be rescinded. The, the Big Beautiful Bill that limited a lot of funding for environmental capacity, did not rescind any obligated funds.

So you know, the hope is, is that we're prevailing courts yet again, that the funding will, again, be reinstated and that we'll be able to implement a lot of these energy affordability projects within the state.

But it's, it's, you know, the more time that we invest in the courts and the longer this is drawn out, the more tricks that the folks have up their sleeves. So, I remain optimistic and I hope that we can be successful in those lawsuits.

May—just one other follow up, for both of you actually. You know, we're hearing a lot of what the wait and see and what comes next, what are the next steps in terms of the, the funding cuts.

So, in your view, what are the specific legislative actions that we can take at the state level, at the federal level to deal with this issue?

Yeah, I mean, I think continued support for our AGs, it's going to be really vital. You know, they're really fighting the good fight there.

I think our Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority is doing an amazing job at working with low and middle income folks, so if we can support them and ensuring they have a revolving fund, I believe right now the paybacks for their loans go back into the general funds, if we can continue to have that in the revolving fund so we continue to have funding to support these things.

I know, you know, state and local tax credits would be incredibly helpful for these. Continued support for our energy office and municipal energy programs are going to be really important for Energy efficiency programs. A lot of those programs have been cut.

You know, I, I think there are just so many things, it's hard to, to list them all out. But just really, I, I'd say really the key thing is to put a climate lens on everything, because climate really does touch on everything and every choice that we make.

You know, I know that it's really heavily balanced on affordability, economy, but we have to really be looking at things long term and understand that the impacts of climate change are going to be in the billions of dollars to this state.

And so, the more money that we can invest in adaptation, mitigation, resilience programs, the more money we're going to save in the long term.

Part because point I'm going to make is that if you do blue sky thinking and you consider what would be the great thing for the Legislature to achieve, it would be an actual plan. I mean, what, you could start with Waikiki, but what would the plan be?

And so, if you had a piece of legislation, you could call it the Waikiki Initiative, but then you could bring to the ground this issue about how we're going to protect our community long term. And if you start thinking long term, Leah mentioned mitigation and adaptation.

I think the prediction of many people is once you get the green fund going and you get the money, you just give it to the hotels, you just build sea walls, you build resiliency centers, and that's it, that's adaptation, which would be a, a tragedy because of people like Leah.

This is the talent that we have, or Chip Fletcher, or like I said, the Legislature. I mean, the value system of this Legislature is not decided by the giants. And of course both of you represent that. So now, before both of you leave, might be a good time anyways.

But if you imagine, just if you start off with a million dollars to put together a program where a Legislator could be a participant, then you have your Office of Sustainability and Climate and then Chip Fletcher, and then bring in a couple of experts and decide, okay, are we going to have Waikiki move?

Are we going to let part of it become like Venice? These don't have to be theoretical decisions, and since it's so valuable, we could figure that out. That's on the adaptation side. On the mitigation side, there's a lot of information out there.

Why can't we suggest what the plan would look like to reduce greenhouse gas efficiently so the earth doesn't heat up above 1.5 degrees? Because all these billions of dollars that are going to be on the future cost sheet of the state don't necessarily have to be there if there is a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

And of course, we need that reduction so we don't have global warming as much as even India does. So, it's possible you could come up with an overall plan that says this, what does it look like to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to keep the earth from heating up to 1.5 degrees? Nuclear energy.

Somebody has to decide if we're going to use nuclear energy. I'd like to see Hawaii's value systems included in that. Maybe we have to use some type of nuclear, maybe not. To what extent are we going to deal with transportation? Hawaii is now going to be a huge leader on that because—so people don't smoke it.

And we did, but that it's not enough because people would, you know, pay a lot to smoke in a bar. So, there was an intervention where the Legislature said, no, it's not worth it economically to have smoking, even though it produces more profits. It's just bad for our health. I mean, that analysis I think is coming when it comes to cars. You know, why can't we just outlaw fossil fuel cars?

I don't mean right away, maybe like California in the future, but I'm just now going into the suite of solutions that are out there and they could be put together and with the value system that Hawaii has and because of the talent we have, it might not be that expensive.

But if you're avoiding $3 billion and you're getting the conversation going internationally, it's really serving the country, the future, the planet, in a way that I think is viable. We have the talent to come up with a global protection plan, and I don't think it would be that much.

Maybe we'd be able to get some additional funds from our federal delegation. I mean, it's a really, really important plan. And you know, I mean, while it's true that Donald Trump right now is a, a threat that has to be contended with, he's unpredictable. If we get—the giants have to be part of this solution.

We can't just sue them into submission. They're too powerful. So, we can work with the giants; we can work with Exxon and mobile. Right? And potentially be able to come up with a solution that has some buy in from the private sector.

All these things are possible—obviously in blue sky thinking, but we are relegated right now to relying on the heroic efforts of our frontline workers of the State of Hawaii in trying to deal with the effects and not being able to deal with the causes.

The causes.

And that's what we could launch Hawaii into a different era where we're talking about looking at the causes and coming up with broad scale solutions. I mean, how many examples do we need? Not just Waikiki, but, you know, houses falling into the ocean on the North Shore. I mean, the community, I think, is ready for it.

The community knows about climate, so it might be an idea worth thinking. Do we, can we have a plan?

Well, I just—my statement is we're looking forward to that input from you guys to come up with this plan. We're about two and a half months out from the session starting and now is a good time to start this collaboration. Yeah, I think it's an excellent idea. Thank you, Chair. It's time.

I agree. It's time. Let's talk about the, this, the last justice, the last case you talked about. And I'm just going to sort of recap in, in hopefully layman's terms, layperson's terms, just to sort of look at the very basics of what it means.

So, the city and county of Honolulu, I think was the initial—when, when Mayor Caldwell was mayor, they decided, well, they, they got—what information did they get that prompted the suit in the first place?

I think information was brought to them by the community and included member of the University of Hawaii faculty that had a lot of information.

The essence of the allegation or the essence of the charge was that the oil companies knew that their product would cause global warming eventually?

Yes.

And let me give you one of the factual allegations that kind of shows what they're trying to prove. When the oil companies were saying there wasn't going to be a sea level rise problem, they were also seeking patents to be able to mine fossil fuel in ice that was melting.

And they tried to hide the fact.

And let me give you one of the factual allegations that kind of shows what they're trying to prove. When the oil companies were saying there wasn't going to be a sea level rise problem, they were also seeking patents to be able to mine fossil fuel in Ayes that was melting.

They saw the level of melting that was going to take place and were preparing for it.

Okay, so they, they knew that. So, the al—the allegation is that they knew the planet was going to get warmer, but so, so that they could continue to pump more gas and oil out of the ground in areas where they knew the, the ice would be melting.

They took out patents, tech, so it would be easier technically to do that. Okay, so, so the city and county says, all right, we have this big problem with more storms. All the models are being proved correct, that the storms are more intense, more frequent. We're having 100 year storms every 10 years, sea levels rising.

We have all these things we're going to have to do as a city and county. The oil companies knew about this, so we're going to sue them for fraud and the money will go.

What are they asking the money to go for if they win?

Well, certainly the money that would go to the city and county of Honolulu would be used for mitigation.

I mean, I hope it would be used for mitigation, but it's up to the city to decide if it's going to be adaptation to pay for the walls that have to be built, sea walls, or whether it's going to be used for mitigation to build resiliency.

I mean, adaptation to build resiliency centers, you know, that are emergency centers for people to get medicine, food, communication when there's an emergency event. Yes, it would go to the city and county of Honolulu and the state, now that the state's joined in the cape.

But you said that because it was a fraud case, because the city and county was saying, you know, you knew about this and you lied about it, that punitive damages, which, of course is a technical legal term, was in play. What does that mean in practice?

Punitive damages are damages that are meant to punish, so if there.

It's calibrated to the size of the, of the, of the defendant then, of the respondent?

Yes.

Okay, so if you're a really big company, it can be a lot of money?

Yes. This could be the biggest punitive damages award in the history of the, of the rule of law.

Okay, so then the—so the city and county does that. And I guess Mayor Blangiardi has continued on with the suit. He hasn't tried to kill it?

Correct.

Okay, and at some point, then, the state has joined in?

Yes.

But they, they came in later, right?

Yes.

But it's the same basic claim.

Correct.

So they're saying that the oil companies knew what they were doing was going to cause global warming. They kept doing it anyway, but they tried to hide that from everybody.

Yes.

Okay, so then it goes to the environmental court that we helped create. The judge there says, yeah, you got a case.

The oil companies say, no, no, no. You know, we're going up to the state Supreme Court. You guys said, yeah, you got a case. Goes back down to the environment.

Well, let me just say I wasn't on the court.

You weren't on the court.

Right after I left.

Okay. So the, the wise Supreme Court says, no, you do have a case. It's just a fraud case. It's, it's standard. Something you learn about in your first year law school.

Written by the Chief Justice.

Written by the Chief Justice. And then it comes back down. And, and then we fast forward to, to make the case go away, the U.S., the United States Justice Department, says we're filing a case that says a state or a county cannot sue on a fraud case.

Is that, is that the gist of it?

Yes, but it's not limited to just fraud. That actions can't be brought—this also included Michigan—can't be brought by these states that are against the fossil fuel companies based on climate claims basically. Very broad.

So do you—are you aware of any other sort of area of human life where we just say you can't sue you, you can't sue about, I don't know, pick anything—bicycles—you can't sue anybody that has anything to do with bicycles. Does that ever happen before in this country?

Well, this is one of the reasons why this case might end up with sanctions for a frivolous lawsuit, except it's being brought by the President of the United States.

All right, so, but, but, but, but obviously this has a very local effect because if the city and county and the state lose and they're not compensated for all this damage that's done, then we pick up the tab. The rest of us pick up the tab.

Okay. All right. Just want to be sure I understood that correctly. It's a little convoluted for the, for people who don't follow that sort of thing. Do you have another one you want to go?

Yeah.

Yeah. I just wanted to ask about the, you know, with the, the federal grant, if they're rescinded, you know, after Hawaiians already begun that project, then what legal protections and remedies do we have?

Lots. And fortunately, you know, we have a robust Attorney General...Lopez.

So, once there is a commitment made and the state starts taking action that could be to its detriment, then there is a principle that can be enforced in court to protect the state on those contracts that have already been obligated and where the state has already started to take action.

And that's happening in court in many places around the United States. I don't have any question that there will be many decisions that will protect funds that are in that situation.

Now, taking an analogy to what happened with the case that the President filed to say that lawsuits can't be filed, given the precedent that he set, there wouldn't be anything that would prevent him from an executive order ordering his Attorney General to file lawsuits, to file lawsuit to prevent the state from contesting these instances in which contracts are already underway and would prevent the state from being able to bring a legitimate claim to say we've already started work and therefore, the contract has to be enforced. Thank you.

Well, I have a question for you, Ms. Laramie. So, we just—first, just speak of Melissa, I think, was the name of the hurricane that just hit Jamaica, is that correct?

Believe so.

So it was a, it was category five when it hit the island, I believe.

Yes.

So, has there ever been that big a storm that late in the season? I mean, this was like the last two weeks of October, yeah.

I couldn't tell you, but I would say it's uncommon for us to get storms that late in the past, but we're expecting to see longer storm seasons and more intense hurricanes.

You know, we've seen just such a huge shift in our weather patterns caused by, you know, human-caused climate change that this won't be unexpected in the future. And the models show that.

But you don't, you don't believe, the models don't indicate that Hawaii will somehow be exempt from these changing weather patterns?

No.

So it's your—I mean, I mean, I think the Lahaina Fire is generally viewed as a global warming fire. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's various factors, but, you know, climate change was definitely one of those.

Okay, so I'm trying to remember how big... was. Was that a Category three or a Category four?

I think it was a four.

One of the few fours that we've had that ever made it up to Hawaii. Yeah. So what, what we have to look forward to then, if we continue on the current course here locally in Hawaii, is some point, well, we're just going to get more Category four hurricanes, maybe Category five—fives that get this far north and threaten Oahu and everybody else.

Correct. That's what the models are showing.

Now, the models, the models have been around for a while now, right? I mean, they started doing the modeling back in, what, the 90s probably?

Yeah. I mean, we've been doing hurricane modeling for, you know, many, many years, but including climate change and, and shifts and weather patterns have been happening for, you know, several decades.

So, I'm sure somebody's looking at it, but maybe if you know the answer, great. If you don't, I understand it. So, when they, when they look at what they were predicting 20 years ago or 25 years ago, in terms of what the model and what the model said, have those predictions come true?

Yeah, we have seen, you know, I mean, it's hard to identify exactly what will hit land. You know, obviously we're a very small land mass in the middle of the ocean, but we have seen, you know, I think it was two summers ago, we saw those, like, four hurricanes kind of circling Hawaii. So, we have seen the increase in frequency and intensity of, of hurricanes following those models.

But that's what the earlier models predicted is increased storms.

Okay.

Correct.

Have, have the models consistently missed one way or the other? Like, if it has, have things been less bad than the models would have indicated 20 or 25 years ago? Or is it, or is—have the...usually been the other way, where things are actually worse than what they said they were going to be?

Things are actually worse.

Is that, I mean, across the board consistently, or is it just?

Yeah, I would say, you know, every time we do additional analysis and look at what the impacts have been, you know, we've seen hotter temperatures, drier rainfall, and more intense frequency and storms. You know, it changes year to year.

You know, sometimes we'll have wetter years, sometimes we'll have drier years. These, these extreme weather events, you know, we can skip a few years and it seems like, okay, it's not going to be so bad, but, you know, we've seen the intensity just increase.

And, you know, these, though they might hit a certain part of the islands, I think we're going to continue to see pretty devastating impacts.

Do you have further questions?

No, I'm good.

I have one more then. So, both of we, both of you, I think, mentioned—well, maybe, maybe only one of you mentioned Waikiki—but Waikiki obviously is a kind of, at least in my mind, it's a first test case. It's, it's a big economic engine.

There's a lot of development on that little spit of land, and this end of it is just barely above sea level now. But I can't remember which of you mentioned it. Okay. It's not necessarily the sea level rise that's the problem at this point. I mean, that's a problem.

But I think Dr. Fletcher's studies have indicated that they're more worried about like rain cells or rain bombs or whatever they're called.

The major threat to Waikiki long term is sea level rise. And when it's combined with heavy rains, we're already at the point of disaster. Right? We've seen that Waikiki has to be closed usually at least once a year when there is heavy, heavy rain as well as a high tide.

So, we're at a stage now where the flooding is upon us short term. But his point is that we are going to lose Waikiki unless we take action other than just building seawalls. And the main scientific reason is because the inundation and flooding comes underneath.

It isn't simply the idea that the ocean rises and we have to stop it with walls because of the increase in the size of the ocean outside of Hawaii, the pressure pushes it into, like if you go to the Waipuna now, go down to the parking level where they have regular flooding, or if you talk to the management at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, it's coming up. So, you can't just build seawalls.

Now, you could theoretically—and actually, from what I understand from him, Florida has proven that this isn't going to work, but it's less likely to work here. Pumps, pumps, pumps. Huge amounts of electricity to have giant pumps that are trying to push the water back into the ocean. But in Florida, there's more of a shallow ocean, a more gentle pressure.

And even there, the idea of pumping out the water that's starting to flood the coastline of Florida isn't working out. So bottom line, something is going to have to be done.

So, I guess what I'm visualizing is, okay, so we build some walls to keep the direct impact of the waves from damaging buildings, and then what that creates, basically—and then you put, and then you put sand on the outside, so you have—you saw the beach, which would be totally artificial, but.

And gets washed away pretty quick.

And it gets washed away, so you have to replenish that fairly routinely.

But then you've got like a bowl that the rest that the Waikiki buildings are in, and the water will come underneath the wall, fill up the bowl, keep the bowl empty. You have to keep draining it, which requires lots of pumping and lots of energy.

So, I mean, it seems to me like they did that in New Orleans, too, in Ward 8, maybe after Katrina. I think a lot of that is well below sea level. But I guess the question is—well, there's a couple questions that come to my mind anyway—is who's going to pay for it?

Because it sounds like a very expensive proposition. And, well, does it make sense to pay for it? And then who pays for it?

And I—wouldn't it be better to have our Legislature making that decision than the decision just being made haphazardly? I mean, it is an important decision. There was a decision made to spend $9 million on rail. That's a major investment for the future of our state and for future generations.

But as Leah pointed out, the cost of this problem, climate change, is going to be a lot more than rail, so if we can avoid some billions of dollars of additional cost by investing now in a project that might cost one or two million dollars, it could make sense and it'd be a nice community building idea. Right?

It's the idea of being forward thinking and bringing the community together. In the Legislature, I mean, everybody has certain concerns about the Legislature at different times. But overall, as I said, our Hawaii Legislature's position to deal with these climate issues as much as virtually any legislative body in the United States.

All these—so I think we sort of agree that Waikiki is, I guess it's fair to say that we agree that Waikiki is sort of the big, the big test case for what happens with, with climate change. Is that fair?

You know, for the economic driver, it's going to be huge. You know, it's built on a wetland, so we're expecting it to be quite wet. It's already having impacts.

But you know, I would really hesitate to say, you know, that's going to be a test bed because, you know, a lot of people are being impacted in, in the places that we're not focusing on.

That was my question is, are there other places, are there other specific geographic locations where we're particularly concerned or is it just the threat level just goes up all around the islands?

All around the islands. We have some great maps that show, you know, the vulnerability of, of, you know, sea level rise, social vulnerability indicators. You know, there's, there's been some great resources put out there. Nowhere is safe, which, you know, is horrific to some places will be more impacted than others.

But you know, it's either going to be drought, which can lead to wildfires, it can be flooding, which can lead to like a number of health and safety impacts. So, you know, nowhere is particularly safe. There's some places that are a little bit more threatened than others.

You know, we see North Shore is one of those areas that we're, you know, seeing houses fall into the ocean. But there's also places where folks are not as able to recover from threats. So, you know, those are, might be less threatened but need more resources input into them.

It's worth saying that, you know, we have an impressive, almost organically grown community group, our Climate Coalition, that's led by Jeff Michelina right now, but—Chris Benjamin's part of it. You know, so we have private industry involved. Leah's part of it.

I mean, many people are involved working on this issue that are really committed at what I guess you could call a public interest level. They're not just special interests focused, which is a way of saying we got the talent. We tried to put an overall broad plan together. I think it'd be pretty great, a great product.

And just to that, I mean one of the great things is that we do have a climate action pathways coming out this December. So that's EPA funded grant that we luckily got the funding unfrozen, thanks to our AGs, and that will—it's primarily mitigation focused.

So, it's building off of the state decarbonization plan and very much linked to the HDOT's energy reduction—energy security waste reduction plan. So, it's very tied into that and has a lot of great recommendations on actions we can take for mitigation.

But a lot of the community feedback we got was also on adaptation concerns of sea level rise and flooding, so we're also doing a resilience chapter there that will also have some additional recommendations included. So it's a first step.

It might not be a fully fledged, you know, recovery plan or prevention plan, but it definitely will have some great recommendations that the Legislature can visit and look at funding some of those options.

Go ahead.

Yeah, I just wanted to add, we're at the Climate Future Forum this last Saturday and that's something else that we need to—really that young energy. Young folks. Getting those folks involved in what we're doing here so that we can send, as we are the leader in environment in this climate issues nationwide.

Let's involve these young people and get involved. You know, let's do something together.

One thing we should also consider is maybe a resolution that gets passed in all 50 states and we can come up with language that we can agree upon whether you're a red state or blue state or whatever and get that to send a powerful message to Washington D.C., right? So, I just, yeah, I was really moved by that.

I love that idea of all 50 states, because this is not a partisan issue.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

And at that conference, there were representatives from the international group of young people like Fridays for the Future, for example, so there is already a network that could be used to do what you're talking about.

Yeah. Can we also talk briefly about the timeline? So, Hawaii, in some sense we're lucky because you know, we still have mountains that go up to 14,000 ft.

So, Sila, you know, we're not, I'm not sure if all the ice in the whole world melted. I'm still not sure those would be underwater. But we have neighbors in the Pacific who are, don't, aren't in that position. What, what's the timeline for—I don't, I'm not sure which ones are the lowest. Kiribase.

Kiribase, Tavalu, Marshall Islands, Samoa.

How, how long before they start just disappearing?

Well, they are now a number of them are working out arrangements so they can move their communities. There's discussion about going to Australia. So, they are at that existential point now, a number of them, but Tavalu and Kiribase primarily, but Marshall Islands are also not far behind, and then Samoa.

So, it is an interesting public policy strategy that they have to use, and they are essentially defenseless. That's what I'd say. At the cops, they bring in the science, they show that their communities are being destroyed, and they've been doing this for a long time, certainly since 2015.

So, at an international level, there's been an acceptance, you might say it's a dark word, but an acceptance. That's just the way it goes. And you know, progress requires sacrifice. And we're sacrificing them, I think, is one way to look at it.

Because for them to be saved, you do have to have a global plan that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and prevents sea level rise. Right? And that is not a comfortable idea for the giants or the energy companies or the energy countries. So they are there. They are.

And it's very legitimate, as Leah has pointed out, to say we are too. We are having Waikiki flooding now and we did have our second largest city burned to the ground. And if you look at what's happening with coral, I mean, there's a cultural side to it which in some ways you could say is soft. Right?

Because you can't put so much money on it. And maybe there isn't that much sensitivity to indigenous values and what the Hawaiian people are suffering.

But if you get to the middle class, normal person, then it's even legitimate to say that they're going to be suffering just because of the cost that's going to come to their quality of life when they have to pay a lot more for water, might probably have to go to desalination, particularly on Oahu.

And they're going to have to also pay a lot more for the kind of commodities that would be coming here because as expensive as it is now, you know, food security around the world is now starting to deteriorate. So, being able to import food is going to be more expensive.

We're certainly paying more in insurance already. I'm pretty sure that's a pretty straight through line to the whole crisis, but yeah. Anything else, sir?

I'm good.

Okay. Well, thank you very much, both of you, for being—spending—an hour and a half with us.

I know the real work was in the preparation, at least that's always been my experience. So, thank you for spending all that time, too. And good to hear you...and right now in this room, it doesn't feel like global warming is much of a possibility because it's about 49 degrees.

But, yes, thank you for being here today. So, any information about past and upcoming briefings that we've had, Senator Gabbard and I had a previous one on agriculture a couple of weeks ago, that's all available on the Senate Judiciary Committee's website and on the Legislature's website.

So, with that, we will conclude. Thanks very much. Thank you.