The fires in Maui are tragic, but they were not unforeseeable.

Dr. Clay Trauernicht predicted this a decade ago.

Dr. Trauernicht is a professor of natural resources and environmental management at the University of Hawaii.  In 2013, he wrote in a paper that giant swaths of grasses that are not native to Hawaii, coupled with dry conditions and high winds, pose a substantial threat of devastating wildfire.

You can read Dr. Trauernicht’s warnings at Pacific Fire Exchange.

A nightmare of fire swept rapidly through Maui, killing and burning as it went.  The loss is heartbreaking.

Immediate and effective disaster response is underway and is 100% warranted.

Exploiting these tragic fires for climate propaganda purposes is not and is 100% shameful.

The usual suspects, however, just couldn’t help themselves.  Here’s just the start:

  • “How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox” The New York Times
  • “Maui Wildfires: Climate Change is Wrecking Former Havens”  Mike Gongloff in Bloomberg
  • “The role climate change has played in Hawaii’s devastating wildfires” NPR
  • “How climate change is making Hawaii more prone to wildfires” CBS

There is nothing meaningful that taxing, regulating, and banning your energy use could have done to prevent non-native grasses from invading unused farmland.  Your lifestyle is not responsible for normal dry conditions, nor would giving up travel and electric-powered conveniences have prevented high wind gusts from naturally occurring Hurricane Dora, hundreds of miles away, from fanning the flames.

Hawaii will (hopefully) learn from this tragedy and implement better fire prevention strategies.

The danger remains, however, that this natural disaster, along with other naturally occurring events such as heat in Athens or fires in Canada, will be used to amplify calls for the UN and President Biden to declare a “climate emergency.” An emergency declaration would bypass the checks and balances built into our constitutional government.

“If there ever was an emergency, the climate crisis is one,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer infamously said.

CFACT’s Marc Morano has been sounding the alarm on the push for Biden to govern by climate emergency decree.  This threat is as genuine as it is dangerous.

Emergency declarations are about taking immediate action when there is no time to deliberate. Sending aid to rescue people suffering from the fires in Maui is a perfect example.

How Americans live, work, and use energy is not.

There is plenty of time to make policy using proper legislative and regulatory processes.

The President’s inability to garner majority support for his policies may be frustrating for the Climate Left, but this is not why presidents are entrusted with emergency powers.

Declaring a “climate emergency” to bypass democracy is dangerous, abusive, and cannot be permitted.

As President Reagan warned us, “if we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”