David Shapiro: Planning for climate change to the sound of ‘ka-ching’

One constant in our city is that money always seems to excuse absurdity.

We saw it when Mayor Kirk Caldwell ripped the Trump administration for denying the dire warnings of its National Climate Assessment, only to practice his own climate denial when it came to Honolulu rail and the development around it.

It would be unthinkable, he said, to take advantage of new climate knowledge and stop rail at Middle Street or reroute it along Beretania Street to the University of Hawaii instead of continuing to aim it at a future swamp in Kakaako and Ala Moana.

“The investment, the infrastructure, the real property values are just too tremendous to do that,” he said. Even if all the money ends up underwater, apparently.

He spoke of elevating stations, hardening shoreline, raising harbors. As for buildings sprouting in the inundation zone, Caldwell said, “The first floor of the building may be surrendered to tides, and then the streets will get raised.”

Does he listen to what he says? It reminds me of lyrics to a Pete Seeger song popular during the Vietnam War: “We were neck deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool said to push on.”

Then there was the City Council merrily approving the latest of several luxury “transit-oriented” developments along Kapiolani Boulevard near Ala Moana Center.

The $510 million Sky Ala Moana, comprising 774 condominium and condo­-­­hotel units in two towers, gets generous height and zoning variances in exchange for including a measly 84 “affordable” units.

It seems lost on the Council that we need tens of thousands of affordable housing units for local people struggling to survive here, and zero new luxury units to be bought by outside speculators parking their money in paradise.

And as we strain to figure out how many visitors our island can reasonably bear, we need zero new hotel rooms — especially projects expanding the tourism footprint outside of Waikiki and into the Kapiolani corridor.

But Council Zoning Chairwoman Kymberly Pine and her colleagues saw only the money. “The economic impacts from this project that will benefit the taxpayers (are) huge,” Pine said.

Money you and I will see little of.

Some of what leaves the developers’ pockets will end up in the campaign coffers of Council members aspiring to become mayor. There will be low-wage jobs generated.

Certainly the city will realize a bounty of property taxes, but it’s a zero-sum game in which much of the revenue will go for infrastructure and services for the new developments — and ultimately, raising streets around them.

Developers and speculators will be cashed out and long gone by the time tides rise; in reward for our servility to their money, our grandkids get to hold the bag they leave behind.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.