<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p><font size="+2"><font face="Calibri"><i><b>August 19</b></i></font></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>, 2023</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ Disaster capitalism aggressive opportunism
- video and transcript
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/18/maui_wildfire_sirens">https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/18/maui_wildfire_sirens</a> ]</i><br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><b>Plantation Disaster Capitalism:
Native Hawaiians Organize to Stop Land & Water Grabs After
Maui Fire</b><br>
Democracy Now!</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Aug 18, 2023 <br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri">With the death toll from the Maui wildfires
at 111 and as many as 1,000 still missing, we speak with
Hawaiian law professor Kapuaʻala Sproat about the conditions
that made the fires more destructive and what's yet to come for
residents looking to rebuild their lives. Decades of
neocolonialism in Hawaii have redirected precious water
resources toward golf courses, resorts and other corporate
ventures, turning many areas into tinderboxes and leaving little
water to fight back against the flames. Now many Hawaiians say
there is a power grab underway as real estate interests and
other wealthy outsiders look to buy up land and water rights on
the cheap as people are still reeling from the loss of their
family members, livelihoods and communities. "Plantation
disaster capitalism is, unfortunately, the perfect term for
what's going on," says Sproat, who just published a piece in The
Guardian with Naomi Klein and is professor of law at Ka Huli Ao
Native Hawaiian Law Center and co-director of the Native
Hawaiian Rights Clinic at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa
School of Law. "The plantations, the large landed interests that
have had control over not just the land, but really much.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri">transcript
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/18/maui_wildfire_sirens">https://www.democracynow.org/2023/8/18/maui_wildfire_sirens</a> ]<br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck7kwvi951o">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck7kwvi951o</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri">- -</font></p>
<i><font face="Calibri">[ violations beyond the flames - clips from
long article in the Guardian ]</font></i><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>Why was there no water to fight the fire in
Maui?</b><br>
Naomi Klein and Kapuaʻala Sproat<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">Big corporations, golf courses and
hotels have been taking water from locals for years. Now the fire
may result in even more devastating water theft<br>
Thu 17 Aug 2023<br>
All over Maui, golf courses glisten emerald green, hotels manage
to fill their pools and corporations stockpile water to sell to
luxury estates. And yet, when it came time to fight the fires,
some hoses ran dry. Why?<br>
<br>
The reason is the long-running battle over west Maui’s most
precious natural resource: water. That’s why, on Tuesday 8 August,
when Tereariʻi Chandler-ʻĪao was fleeing the fires in Lahaina, she
grabbed a bag of clothes, some food – and something a little
unconventional: a box filled with water use permit applications.<br>
<br>
Despite her personal calamity, Tereariʻi, a grassroots attorney,
already knew that the fight for Maui’s future was about to
intensify, and at its heart would not be fire, but another element
entirely: water. Specifically, the water rights of Native
Hawaiians, rights that a long parade of plantations, real estate
developers, and luxury resorts have been stifling for nearly two
centuries. As the flames approached, Tereariʻi feared that, under
cover of emergency, those large players might finally get their
chance to grab west Maui’s water for good...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Even long after most of those original
plantations closed, the infrastructure and dynamics of water theft
remained. Today, many Native Hawaiian communities, who have lived
in Maui Komohana since time immemorial, remain cut off from water
for their basic needs, including drinking, laundry and traditional
crop irrigation. For instance, Lauren Palakiko, whose family has
resided in Kauaʻula for centuries and has priority water rights
under the law, last year testified at a state water commission
hearing that she had to bathe her baby in a bucket because not
enough water reached her home. That’s because the streams that
once flowed through their valley are diverted for luxury
subdivisions, which often occupy plantation-controlled lands...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Together, the communities have been fighting
for their right to manage their own water rather than watch as it
is diverted for often frivolous uses. June 2022 saw a historic
victory: heeding the overwhelming demands of Native Hawaiians and
other residents, the water commission voted unanimously to
designate west Maui as a surface and groundwater management area.
Under Hawaii’s water code, this designation invokes the
commission’s permitting authority to protect priority Native
Hawaiian rights and the environment over the historical and
ongoing overexploitation of water by plantations and developers.<br>
<br>
After protracted struggle, and despite predictable opposition from
industry, the community and the water commission prevailed,
instituting a new permitting system that the community hoped would
restore public control over water that had been stolen for over a
century. The Palakiko family and others began filling out water
use permit applications requesting water for their household
needs, like bathing their babies, and also water for Indigenous
wetland agriculture...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- But here’s the cruelest irony: the deadline
to submit those permit applications to the water commission was on
Monday 7 August. And the fire that devoured Lahaina was the very
next day.<br>
<br>
The Hawaii governor’s administration wasted no time in issuing
emergency proclamations that suspended a series of laws, including
Hawaii’s “state water code, to the extent necessary to respond to
the emergency”. The plantation successors leapt into action,
attempting an end run around the designation process that they had
been unsuccessful in stopping before the emergency proclamation.
In the days after the fires, WML demanded the water commission
suspend protections for streams across Maui Komohana – even in
areas untouched by fire – and insinuated that the commission’s
deputy director, Kaleo Manuel, who had been the agency’s public
face throughout the designation process, was to blame for the
destructive fire. The commission chair granted the request,
allowing the corporation to divert the streams to fill the
reservoirs that service its luxury developments. WML finally
requested that the entire designation process “be suspended and
ultimately modified”. Its own executive publicly stated: “I would
love to see it gone” – a move denounced by the Earthjustice
managing attorney Isaac Moriwake as an attempt to “use this
tragedy for cheap advantage”.<br>
<br>
Then, on Wednesday, with searches for survivors still very much
under way, the administration announced it was “re-deploying”
Manuel, effectively relieving him of all duties and banishing him
to an unknown different post. The move has left the commission
without an administrative leader.<br>
<br>
This is a classic case of the most craven disaster capitalism: a
small elite group using a profound human tragedy as their window
to roll back a hard-won grassroots victory for water rights, while
removing civil servants who pose a political inconvenience to the
administration’s pro-developer agenda...</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">- -</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">Many Maui Komohana communities refuse to accept
WML’s rewriting of history. They know, for example, it was
actually high winds that prevented helicopters from fighting the
fires, and when they were ultimately used, seawater proved more
accessible. They also understand that the desiccated conditions
that made the region so vulnerable are a result of over a century
of settler colonialism, in which Indigenous resources have been
hoarded by the plantations and their successors. As Hawaii’s poet
laureate, Brandy Nālani McDougall, explained, if “water was
allowed to flow, where it was allowed to be created and continued
to feed and nurture everyone it should, this wouldn’t have
happened”.<br>
<br>
If there is a cause for hope, it’s that Maui’s people have learned
from their history. Yes, irreplaceable historical and cultural
artifacts have been lost to the flames but not the teachings that
those artifacts represent. Native Hawaiians know what their rights
are – to stay on their ancestral lands, to restore streamflows to
those lands, and to ensure their Indigenous lifeways will
persevere in the face of a climate crisis fueled by colonial
pillage. Indeed, those traditional lifeways historically restored
abundance to the islands, while plantation mismanagement has
turned the land into a desert. That’s why grassroots organizers
like Tereariʻi knew to take that box of precious papers relating
to water rights, filled with notes collected during careful
community engagement and consultation...<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">This hard-won knowledge is also why, as
soon as the real estate developers started circling, local
residents began organizing to call out disaster profiteering. Many
have also committed to securing the resources required to get
families back into rebuilt homes – and to be the authors and
architects of their own post-disaster reconstruction, a process
grounded in aloha ʻāina, the ethos of deep reverence for natural
and cultural resources.<br>
<br>
That ethos is the reason that water is a public trust in Hawaii,
not owned by anyone – not the governor, WML or even Native
Hawaiians with ancestral ties to the resource. Instead, under
Indigenous law, water is zealously stewarded for present and
future generations so that all can thrive. While politically
inconvenient for some, this principle is what will preserve life
on these fragile islands. Aloha ʻāina enabled Native Hawaiians to
flourish in Hawaii for a millennium, and it’s precisely this kind
of biocultural knowledge that is needed to navigate the path
forward in a time of climate crisis.<br>
<br>
Hawaii is indeed in an emergency, but it needs emergency
proclamations that operationalize aloha ʻāina, not ones that push
it aside by opportunistically suspending inalienable water laws
and dismissing diligent public servants. What this governor does
next will determine if Maui Komohana will remain a space for
Indigenous and other local families like the Palakikos, or if
companies like WML and its affluent customers are empowered to
complete their takeover of land and water in west Maui.<br>
<br>
Right now, the eyes of the world are on Maui, but many don’t know
where to look. Yes, look to the wreckage, the grieving families,
the traumatized children, the incinerated artifacts, and donate
what you can to community-led groups on the ground. But look below
and beyond that too. To the aquifers and streams, and the
plantation-era diversion ditches and reservoirs. Because that’s
where the water is, and whoever controls the water controls the
future of Maui.<br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/17/hawaii-fires-maui-water-rights-disaster-capitalism">https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/17/hawaii-fires-maui-water-rights-disaster-capitalism</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri">- -<br>
</font></p>
<i>[ Maui wildfire video rant "climate change and colonialism" ]</i><br>
<b>Maui Fires: Was it Space Lasers or Colonialism?</b><br>
Rebecca Watson<br>
Aug 16, 2023<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mpWHaY7GF0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mpWHaY7GF0</a><br>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
<i>[ Elephants in the room - another critical comic rant ]</i><br>
<b>Paradise is Burning - Lewis Black's Rantcast</b><br>
Lewis Black<br>
Aug 18, 2023 Lewis Black's Rantcast<br>
Lewis discusses the wildfires that devastated the island of Maui in
addition to a few other "elephants" in the room. <br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDYnmaL1Dvo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDYnmaL1Dvo</a></font>
<p><font face="Calibri"></font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<i><font face="Calibri">[ Podcast -- Dave Roberts interviews his
pal ]</font></i><br>
<font face="Calibri"><b>A conversation with Saul Griffith</b><br>
What it says on the tin.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">AUG 18, 2023<br>
</font><font face="Calibri">If you are a Volts subscriber, you are
almost certainly familiar with Saul Griffith. I've been following
him and his work for years, and I think I can say without
hyperbole that he is the smartest person I have ever met.<br>
<br>
An Australian by birth and an MIT PhD by training, he got his
start as a tinkerer, inventor, and entrepreneur, responsible for,
among other things, the kite-based wind power company Makani and
the innovation incubator Otherlab.<br>
<br>
A few years ago, alarmed by the lack of progress on climate
change, he turned his attention to public advocacy, authoring the
book Electrify and co-founding Rewiring America. That organization
has, in relatively little time, become incredibly influential
among US thought leaders and policy makers. It played a key role
in the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">In 2021, Griffith and his family moved back to
Australia, where he helped found Rewiring Australia, and sure
enough, it has already become as or more influential than its
American counterpart. As Volties know, I am currently down in
Australia. I was scheduled to do a public event with Griffith, so
I thought it would be fun to meet up a little beforehand to record
a pod.<br>
<br>
Neither of us had particularly prepared for said pod, but it will
not surprise you to hear that Griffith was nonetheless as
fascinating and articulate as always, on subjects ranging from IRA
to Australian rooftop solar to green steel. Enjoy.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.volts.wtf/p/a-conversation-with-saul-griffith?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=136183245&utm_medium=email#details">https://www.volts.wtf/p/a-conversation-with-saul-griffith?utm_source=podcast-email%2Csubstack&publication_id=193024&post_id=136183245&utm_medium=email#details</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font></p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[The news archive - looking back at methane.
- Nothing natural about Natural Gas ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>August 19, 2015 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> August 19, 2015:</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">The New York Times reports:</font><br>
<blockquote><font face="Calibri">"A little-noted portion of the
chain of pipelines and equipment that brings natural gas from
the field into power plants and homes is responsible for a
surprising amount of methane emissions, according to a study on
Tuesday.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"Natural-gas gathering facilities, which
collect from multiple wells, lose about 100 billion cubic feet
of natural gas a year, about eight times as much as estimates
used by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to the
study, which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and
Technology.</font><br>
<br>
<font face="Calibri">"The newly discovered leaks, if counted in
the E.P.A. inventory, would increase its entire systemwide
estimate by about 25 percent, said the Environmental Defense
Fund, which sponsored the research as part of methane emissions
studies it organized."</font><br>
</blockquote>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/science/methane-leaks-in-natural-gas-supply-chain-far-exceed-estimates-study-says.html?mwrsm=Email">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/science/methane-leaks-in-natural-gas-supply-chain-far-exceed-estimates-study-says.html?mwrsm=Email</a>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <br>
<br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri">======================================= <br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b class="moz-txt-star"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">*Mass media is lacking, many </span>daily
summaries<span class="moz-txt-tag"> deliver global warming
news - a few are email delivered*</span></b> <br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><br>
=========================================================<br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>*Inside Climate News</b><br>
Newsletters<br>
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every
day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s
top headlines deliver the full story, for free.<br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/">https://insideclimatenews.org/</a><br>
--------------------------------------- <br>
*<b>Climate Nexus</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*">https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*</a>
<br>
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News
summarizes the most important climate and energy news of the
day, delivering an unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant
reporting. It also provides original reporting and commentary on
climate denial and pro-polluter activity that would otherwise
remain largely unexposed. 5 weekday <br>
================================= <br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b class="moz-txt-star"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>Carbon Brief Daily </b><span
class="moz-txt-star"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up">https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up</a></span><b
class="moz-txt-star"><span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b> <br>
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon
Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to
thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest
of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change
and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in
the peer-reviewed journals. <br>
more at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief">https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief</a>
<br>
================================== <br>
*T<b>he Daily Climate </b>Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*">https://ehsciences.activehosted.com/f/61*</a>
<br>
Get The Daily Climate in your inbox - FREE! Top news on climate
impacts, solutions, politics, drivers. Delivered week days.
Better than coffee. <br>
Other newsletters at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/">https://www.dailyclimate.org/originals/</a>
<br>
<br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri">
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/
<br>
/Archive of Daily Global Warming News <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/">https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/theclimate.vote/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
/To receive daily mailings - click to Subscribe <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request"><mailto:subscribe@theClimate.Vote?subject=Click%20SEND%20to%20process%20your%20request></a>
to news digest./<br>
<br>
Privacy and Security:*This mailing is text-only. It does not
carry images or attachments which may originate from remote
servers. A text-only message can provide greater privacy to the
receiver and sender. This is a personal hobby production curated
by Richard Pauli<br>
By regulation, the .VOTE top-level domain cannot be used for
commercial purposes. Messages have no tracking software.<br>
To subscribe, email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated
moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote">contact@theclimate.vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:contact@theclimate.vote"><mailto:contact@theclimate.vote></a>
with subject subscribe, To Unsubscribe, subject: unsubscribe<br>
Also you may subscribe/unsubscribe at <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote">https://pairlist10.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/theclimate.vote</a><br>
Links and headlines assembled and curated by Richard Pauli for <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://TheClimate.Vote">http://TheClimate.Vote</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://TheClimate.Vote/"><http://TheClimate.Vote/></a>
delivering succinct information for citizens and responsible
governments of all levels. List membership is confidential and
records are scrupulously restricted to this mailing list. </font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font>
</body>
</html>