Media: the vultures fly

By Richard North - August 12, 2023

Like vultures circling over a dying animal in anticipation of a feast, sections of the media are honing their climate change rhetoric as they seek to explain the reasons for the devastating fires on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Bloomberg kicks off with an article headed: “Maui Fires Show Climate Change’s Ugly Reach”, while the usual culprits are out in force. The BBC, for instance, is playing a devious game of pinpointing climate change as the cause without actually saying so.

Covering all the bases, the broadcaster allows that “scientists also note” that some parts of the Hawaiian Islands are covered with non-native grasses that are more flammable than native plants, although that is as far as we’re allowed to go in the search for causes of the conflagration.

The BBC’s partner in crime, the Guardian, is also on the case, as one might expect, with a detailed “explainer” which leaves the reader in no doubt as to the preferred culprit.

“The climate crisis, driven by fossil fuel use”, the paper says, “is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including wildfires like the ones Maui is grappling with”.

In another piece we then have Kaniela Ing, a climate activist and indigenous leader in Hawaii, whom the paper has say: “The extreme wildfires in Lahania, in this summer of climate disasters, are yet more proof that we are in a climate emergency and this crisis is killing us”.

However, with a little more detail than that BBC is prepared to offer, the paper in its “explainer” quotes Clay Trauernicht, a fire scientist at Hawaii University. He says the wet season could spur plants like Guinea grass, an invasive species found across parts of Maui, to grow as quickly as 6in (15cm) a day and reach up to 10ft (3 meters) tall. That grass creates a tinderbox that’s ripe for wildfire as it dries out.

“These grasslands accumulate fuels very rapidly,” Trauernicht is cited as saying. “In hotter conditions and drier conditions, with variable rainfall, it’s only going to exacerbate the problem”.

Yet, while Guinea grass is only allowed to “exacerbate” the problem, we are regaled with the thoughts that climate change “not only increases the fire risk by driving up temperatures, but also makes stronger hurricanes more likely. In turn, those storms could fuel stronger wind events like the one behind the Maui fires”.

Then it is the turn of the Guardian’s raft of anonymous “experts”, who warn that disasters such as the one unfolding on Maui are driven by multiple factors, but that the climate crisis is “an undeniable contributor”.

Kelsey Copes-Gerbitz, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of forestry is the chosen one to convey the message of doom. He is enlisted to tell us that: “These kinds of climate change-related disasters are really beyond the scope of things that we’re used to dealing with”, adding: “It’s these kind of multiple, interactive challenges that really lead to a disaster”.

For a more detailed “explainer”, though, one might turn to the local press in the form of the Hawaii Business Magazine, which has a long article headed: “Why Hawai‘i’s Wildfires Are Growing Bigger and More Intense”.

“The unfolding disaster on Maui is a sign of things to come”, it tells us, “as invasive grasses spread across the landscape and extreme rain-drought cycles intensify their fuel loads”. It then goes on to offer “the science behind Hawai‘i’s wildfires, and the experts who are fighting to stop them”.

Crucially, this article is not about the current disaster. It is dated 11 November 2022, and it starts by featuring the “massive 2018 wildfires” that ripped through the islands. We have been here before.

Fostering that sense of déjà vu, the article also cites Trauernicht, only this time – years earlier than the Guardian quote – he puts Guinea grass firmly in the frame. Its rapid spread, pronounced rainfall and drought cycles that intensify the grasses’ fuel loads, and more people doing reckless things, he says, have resulted in a 400 percent increase in wildfires over the past several decades.

But we get more.

Guinea grass, or Megathyrsus maximus, is remarkably hardy. While the grass turns pale and lifeless during droughts, it bounces back after a single rainfall. In heavy rains, long green shoots can sprout overnight.

Guinea grass and fountain grass, along with non-native scrubland, now cover about a quarter of Hawai‘i’s land, or 1 million acres, says Trauernicht. Much of that land was once used for farming and ranching; it now lies vacant, the remnants of faded industries.

A 2020 report from the Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture shows that, of the 1.93 million acres designated for agriculture in the state, only 6.2 percent was being used to grow crops. Another 40 percent was being used as pastureland. That’s less cropland than in the 2015 census, which was taken shortly before the closing of the last sugar mill on Maui, HC&S, the Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co.

With many grazing animals gone and fields left fallow, nonnative grasses flourish. And they’re highly flammable. A single spark – from a campfire or a car’s hot catalytic converter rolling across a field – can trigger massive wildfires, such as the July 2019 blaze in Maui’s central valley that burned through 10,000 acres of old sugar cane fields.

“These monotypic strands of grasses are monstrous”, says Trauernicht. “They just attain enormous fuel loads. I can’t find parallels anywhere, and I’ve dug deep in the literature, that compares to the amount of fuels that we get with Guinea grasses and even fountain grasses”.

“The worst-case scenario”, Trauernicht adds, “is when heavy rains trigger rapid growth, followed by severe drought, which withers the grass and turns it into tinder. And, boom, our fire risk goes through the roof”.

Why the grazing animals have gone and the fields are left fallow is another story, but an important part of the picture. Partly, it is a reflection of the way Hawai‘i’s economy has changed: as agriculture has shrunk, more land has been left fallow and grazing animals have been removed. Guinea grass and other nonnative species take over the landscapes with their extremely high “fuel loads,” making fires larger and more intense.

Nevertheless, it is recognised that strategic, managed grazing is by far the best tool for fire-fuels management and risk reduction, but there is a problems with that.

Elizabeth Pickett, co-executive director of the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organisation notes that there’s a strong “anti-ungulate” faction among environmentalists, in the manner of Monbiot, who resist increases in livestock farming.

Structural problems with the industry have also contributed to the problem, as has government interference, limiting the availability of slaughterhouses which underpins the profitability of the farming industry.

As for the nature of the fires, Pickett, Trauernicht and other researchers have analysed records from 2005 to 2011, finding that grassland and shrubland made up the vast majority of land burned (an average of 8,427 hectares, or 20,815 acres, per year).

But 66 percent of wildfires actually started in populated areas, and there are far more of those kind of fires than most people realise. One island sees about 500 to 600 ignitions a year.

In total, there were 7,054 reported wildfires across the state during the seven-year span studied, and 6,218 listed a cause of ignition. Of those, 1.5 percent were attributed to natural causes, 2 percent to arson, 16 percent to accidents and the rest were “undetermined” or “unknown.” In nearly all cases, people are to blame, with the top causes being campfires, fireworks, and heat and sparks from vehicles and equipment.

On the other hand, firefighting on the islands has been problematical. With 26 percent of the islands under the forestry division jurisdiction, much of it rugged and difficult to access, firefighting can be challenging work. Depending on the weather and terrain, the teams might use hand tools to shovel dirt and bulldozers to cut firebreaks.

Until recently, their firefighting duties were completely unfunded, we are told, bundled into the tiny $600,000 annual budget for all forestry and wildlife efforts. Some of its equipment is from the Vietnam War era.

While state funding has increased recently, Eric Moller, Hawai‘i Island deputy fire chief, remarks that resources are still spread thinly. “In California, you’ll hear about a 4,000-acre fire just north of LA with 200 firefighters on the scene”, he says. “We’ll have a 20,000-acre fire with 35 people fighting it”, including volunteers.

So where does that leave climate change? US government services note that droughts are a natural, frequent occurrence in Hawai’i with impacts on all islands. They are often associated with El Niño events, it says, exactly the conditions which are currently prevailing.

The government weather service also notes that drought duration and severity have increased over the past century in Hawai’i – hardly surprising given that we are approaching the end of an interglacial period.

But, with such a long lead time, its warning that “advanced planning and implementation of adaptation actions are critical for improving resilience to future droughts”, sounds somewhat hollow. Planning and adaptation are quite evidently in short supply.

In the greater scheme of things, the devastation on the island of Maui seems to have all the elements of a disaster waiting to happen. If climate change is a contributing factor – in the context of change recorded over the last century – it is very minor, compared to the multiplicity of other factors, mostly man-made.

And yet, still the vultures fly.