In keeping with the left doctrine that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, the New York Times shamelessly blamed the wildfires in Hawaii that killed more than 80 people and cost tens of billions of dollars in property losses on climate change.
This is fake news. There were many contributing factors to the fire, but a big one was the left’s obsession with “green energy” which created the tinder box. We’ve tracked these revelations from major news stories:
-
-
- “Four years ago, the utility said it needed to do more to prevent its power lines from emitting sparks. It made little progress, focusing on a shift to clean energy… Between 2019 and 2022, it invested less than $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects on the island, regulatory filings show.” Source: WSJ 8/17/23
-
-
-
- “In a funding request last year, Hawaiian Electric asked the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to spend $189 million on climate resiliency efforts over the next five years, including to protect against wildfires and downed power lines. ‘The risk of a utility system causing a wildfire ignition is significant,’ the company’s application stated, citing the PG&E situation.” Source: CNN 8/14/23
-
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/
-
-
- “After the 2019 wildfire season, Hawaiian Electric even commissioned a report, which concluded that the utility should do far more to prevent its power lines from setting invasive grasses on fire. Since that report less than $245,000 was spent on wildfire projects. Instead, the utility spent millions trying to meet a 2015 mandate created by Democrats that would require 100% of the utility’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045.” Source: Washington Examiner 8/18/23
-
https://www.
The bottom line: instead of spending millions of dollars on fire prevention as the experts recommended, the Public Utility Commission spent that money and more on complying with an absurd state law that “by 2045 the state will be 100 percent renewable energy.”