Chuck “Doc” Burrows shares his mana'o of protest and concern over climate change harm in the islands. - Photo: Liza Simon

Honolulu ground zero for global warming conference
As the world warms: synchronicity sought
between native and technology solutions

By Liza Simon / Ka Wai Ola

A modern David versus Goliath conflict pitting big fossil-fuel burning nations against small islands struggling to cope with the harmful fuel emissions that cause global warming gained momentum and some unexpected media coverage last month in Honolulu. Delegates of 16 industrialized nations were convened here by the White House to discuss global warming solutions but were also confronted by the protests of local environmentalists concerned that global warming is already leading to rising tides that can wash away land and harm native cultures that rely on coastal resources.

“Don't be thrown off by the word global. This is a local problem with very serious social impacts for island people,” said Native Hawaiian Chuck “Doc” Burrows, a retired Kamehameha Schools science teacher and advocate for local environmental causes.

Burrows recalled that long ago in Hawai'i fossil fuels were praised “as something that would give us a higher standard of living.” But he said fossil-fuel pollution is dividing those who can afford resources to fight impacts from those who cannot. “The projected effects on poor people and indigenous people will be drastic. This is not just a scientific matter, this is a social tragedy in the making,” said Burrows, whose comments were carried on the BBC, one of many international news media networks that covered the conference.

Jeff Mikulina of the Hawai'i Chapter of the Sierra Club, which organized the protest demonstrations, said several news reporters from Japan and China were surprised to find Americans lobbing criticism at the Bush administration for not joining the Kyoto Accord or other United Nations processes that would mandate cuts in global warming emissions from industry. “They had been told by administration officials that U.S. citizens do not believe global warming is a real issue,” said Mikulina.

While the Bush administration has done little to recognize the human causes of the problem, there's widespread evidence now that burning fossil fuels in gasoline and other common energy sources depletes the earth's protective ozone layer, causing polar ice caps to melt and resulting in the swelling of oceans, which has been recorded in coastal areas throughout the world as sea-rise. In addition to inundating land, climatologists warn that sea-rise may destroy coral reefs and wildlife habitat and cause severe storms and even threats to human health.

To dramatize global warming's possible local effect, the Sierra Club organized students to go around Honolulu and mark with blue chalk a line representing the projected inundation zone resulting from a one-meter rise in sea level that scientists expect Hawai'i will experience by the end of this century. The Blue Line Project, as it was known, was described in a New York Times editorial, noting that downtown Honolulu was on the wrong side of the line. The editorial also noted that demonstrators and conference delegates agreed on at least one thing: as the only island state in the U.S., Hawai'i faces a great global warming dilemma but also has great options for coping by tapping into an abundance of clean renewable energy sources including sun, wind and waves.

Inside the global warming convention, Gov. Linda Lingle remarked to delegates that she wasn't happy that Hawai'i is the most oil-dependent state in America, “importing 90 percent of its oil and leading the nation in gasoline costs.” But she said the state is making strides in revamping its energy policy: this includes the 2006 Hawai'i state Legislature passing the Global Warming Solutions Act, which mandates statewide greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

But at a global-warming teach-in across from the conference, local lawmakers in the audience included Rep. Mina Morita, a member of the Native Hawaiian Caucus and the newly formed Climate Caucus, which has introduced several additional bills this session aimed at promoting energy conservation by giving residents incentives for buying non-polluting cars and renewable energy sources at home.

Reducing energy consumption is everyone's responsibility, Mikulina said at the teach-in, advocating for making green-house gas reduction a matter of individual duty – by opting to bike instead of drive or to buy high-efficiency lighting. He also said that local government action would have no teeth unless the U.S. and other major greenhouse gas producing industrial nations commit to serious mitigation efforts now.

In the audience, Micronesian college student Chandra Legdesog said that her Pacific Islander friends are very concerned about global warming after witnessing the ongoing inundation of low-lying coral atoll Tuvalu, which is expected to be wiped from the earth in less than 50 years.

Earlier in the day, President Bush's representative at the conference, Jim Connaughton, alluded to the Tuvalu plight in saying: “It's important to bear in mind that the most vulnerable countries and the poorest countries, those who have contributed nothing to climate change, will be the worst affected by its impact.” Connaughton said a key solution is the clean energy source of biodiesel, a fuel made by converting cooking oil into car-engine use.

But Henry Curtis, executive director of Life of the Land, called the benefits of biodiesel a myth. He criticized a local plan by Hawaiian Electric Co. to use imported palm oil from Indonesia to generate energy in Hawai'i. “Our energy industry and oil companies are making so much money from the climate disaster that there is no incentive to change,” Curtis said at the teach-in. “They will try to make their path to the future sound green, but it will be one that will continue to enable them to make tremendous profits.”

Doc Burrows, prefacing his remarks at the teach-in with an oli, said that the lack of concerted action by industrialized governments may result in “cultural genocide.” Burrows told the story about his recent visit with a Native Alaskan tribe in distress. Drilling by major oil companies has destroyed the habitat of migratory caribou – the tribe's source of subsistence living. “In looking for solutions, native peoples everywhere face the same concerns in keeping our lands safe because when we lose our lands, we lose our culture, too.”

If the fight against global warming is galvanizing interest in indigenous stewardship, it comes as no surprise to anyone who can recall the 1996 lawsuit against Hawai'i Island county officials who denied Native Hawaiian gathering rights in granting a permit to an oceanside resort. Enviromental Activism to use legal means to protect Hawai'i's resources for Native Hawaiians was spearheaded by kumu hula, who united with non-Hawaiian environmental activists. This resulted in the Hawai'i Supreme Court decision on Public Access Shoreline Hawai'i, popularly known as PASH, which guaranteed hula artists could enter private property to search for natural materials needed in their art.

Vicky Holt-Takamine channeled the spike in environmental activism into later co-founding the group KAHEA. Before global warming's effect on island ecosystems became evident to most scientists, KAHEA was drawing attention to the loss of habitat and resulting plight of many of Hawai'i's endangered wildlife species, including many marine species in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. “Conservation has to be global; but for Native Hawaiians, we also must fight to preserve the biodiversity of the land that is ours,” said Takamine.

As part of a growing trend, government conservation agencies are now asking native people to contribute traditional knowledge in protecting wildlife from global warming problems. Several days before the White House convened the global warming conference, the National Marine Fisheries Service invited Wai'anae Harbor Master and noted marine conservationist William Ailā to speak to scientists at a workshop on how to protect endangered monk seals in the French Frigate Shoals of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where rising sea levels linked to global warming have eroded monk seal breeding habitats, leaving the carcasses of newborn seals vulnerable to attack by Galapagos sharks. Ailā agreed that it would be reasonable to consider one proposal to hunt the predatory sharks, but he added a perspective that he said was based on his lifetime as a Native Hawaiian familiar with island waters: “The right culprits must be taken in reasonable numbers, or else (the sharks) may even adapt to the culling and be able to evade it. The more we experience these problems with extinction and predation, the more it becomes apparent we need to focus on a balance between the species,” he added.

Some question whether government agencies and scientists looking to include the knowledge of indigenous peoples in policy-making may come too late. “We have to ask if this is just window dressing and disguise for resistance to more widespread environmental responsibility,” said Burrows.

On Kaua'i, sea-rise has claimed the coastal habitat of several native bird species, which are flying inland and fatally flying into utility lines. This has prompted a lawsuit to require power companies to do expanded environmental assessments in positioning utility lines in order to save the birds from continued harm.

More court cases involving global warming are likely. Meanwhile, some favor a humane response. Rev. David Turner of Hawai'i Interfaith Power and Light said he was glad the protest drew such a cross-section of people including Native Hawaiians: “Folks like myself are finding a synergy with the spiritual traditions of indigenous people in building an effective response to global warming. In a situation where we face dire consequences for the planet, it is absolutely imperative for the people to connect at a deeper place and have compassion for one another. This is what led to change during the Civil Rights struggle. Without a spiritual connection, we cannot make it happen.”