Time to act on climate change

Climate change suddenly became very real for a lot more key people in Hawaii.

Of course, the consensus that it’s real has been a long-standing one among scientists. But because of bills just signed into law, it’s going to have a direct effect, for starters, on how developers, planners and the building industry approach their work.

Global warming and sea-level rise once were seen as challenges to be confronted in the misty future, but this change begins right now.

One concrete step in the right direction was the enactment of House Bill 2106, which takes effect immediately. Before projects can be built, any required environmental assessment or environmental impact statement must include a sea-level-rise analysis.

Climate-change planning has been a key focal point in studies at the University of Hawaii Department of Urban and Regional Planning, the UH School of Architecture and other institutions grappling with the adaptations to the effects of sea levels on the built environment.

Because of this bill, however, it’s the private developers who now own this responsibility if environmental studies are required — as they tend to be in major projects.

Another measure signed into law this week by Gov. David Ige includes the aspirational HB 2182, which sets a target date of 2045 for the state to become “carbon neutral.” This would require Hawaii to capture and remove (“sequester”) more carbon emissions than it produces in the atmosphere. The bill also creates the Greenhouse Gas Sequestration Task Force to head up the effort.

State Rep. Chris Lee, who sponsored the bills, said the task force will work to identify next steps toward these goals that will require further legislative action. These moves, he rightly said, are not an end in themselves but a beginning.

That conclusion was underscored by Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the nonprofit Blue Planet Foundation, one of the key advocates supporting these environmental policy goals. Aspirations are crucial to this work, he said, and that’s where the clean-energy movement began in the state.

But it wouldn’t have progressed without the implementation of utility mandates for making clean- energy targets and penalties for missing them. Those are missing in other aspects of laws to counter climate change.

Hawaii needs to advance its goals, he added, by moving more aggressively away from fossil- fuel-guzzling cars, setting a target date for their replacement with emission-free vehicles.

“We’ve done a good job with the vision thing, but what does this mean?” he asked. “If we’re serious about achieving these visions, we have to put these pieces in place.”

And while the third measure signed into law, HB 1986, similarly is only the initiation of a new program, it’s one the state needs to make significant progress toward carbon neutrality. It requires the state Office of Planning to partner with the task force to set up a carbon offset program.

California and other states have preceded Hawaii in such a program, which allows carbon offset credits to be purchased by private industries that need to offset polluting activities.

The state revenue can be reinvested in ways — such as agricultural best practices — to further reduce or absorb carbon emissions, Lee said. Or it can be spent on infrastructure to improve resiliency against sea-level rise.

Last year Hawaii became the first state to adopt a law aligning with the Paris Agreement on climate change. Politicians like being first at something important like that.

But while it does have important branding cachet for a tourism mecca, the symbolism of those pioneering first steps isn’t enough.

It’s the second, third and fourth steps that will make the aspirations a reality. And Hawaii citizens must urge their leaders to take them.