Maui Mayor Michael Victorino recently announced plans for Maui County to sue fossil-fuel companies for climate change-related damages.

This is a good first step, but Hawaii as a state needs to sue. Those running fossil-fuel companies have known since 1965 that they are driving us into climate crisis, but instead of changing course they spent millions lying and barreling us onward to the cliff edge of catastrophe so they could continue to rake in profits.

In Hawaii, we need to come up with the money to address damages as a result of rising shorelines and increased fires — and that’s just the tip of this melting iceberg.

This will cost us big. It makes sense to place the onus of this burden on those companies that knew the damage they were inflicting and decided to do so anyway.

Brooke Jones

Liliha

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