Hawaii Democratic Gov. Josh Green has agreed that climate change “amplified” the failures of officials to act properly on the Maui wildfires.
While appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Green spoke extensively about what some people have considered critical mistakes by both local officials and private companies regarding the disaster.
Though Green acknowledged failures in decisions made “in the moment” by these actors, he also remarked that these mistakes were aggravated by climate change.
When asked whether climate change amplified the cost of human error, he said “Yes. It did,”
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Speaking further, he said “There’s always going to be incredible things that people do to save lives from the firefighters, from the citizens. And there are always decisions made that I’m sure aren’t perfect in the moment. But when you have fire that moved more than a mile a minute, and what happened, I’m told by some of the survivors, they were at the initial fire, it was put out some time late in the afternoon in Lahaina, and then the firefighters had to go to three other fires that started because of the conditions.”
According to him, while there’s no excuses ever to be made, there are finite resources sometimes in the moment.
Green further remarked that there is currently a comprehensive review on whether power lines caused the initial fires but continued to emphasize the impact of climate change.
“It’s not to excuse anything else from any company. It’s just to explain what the world should prepare for. I humbly ask all of the cities and states to spend that money now to prevent disasters like we are seeing here,” Green said.
Story was adapted from New York Post.
