A call for resiliency on the Big Island

Image courtesy of Christian Joudrey

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how vulnerable our modern societies are, particularly in an isolated island state like Hawaii.

We import 99% of our transportation fuel from thousands of miles away.

We import about 90% of our food, and the amount of local food produced is declining in recent years rather than increasing.

Almost all of our consumer, medical, and industrial goods are shipped or flown in, over thousands of miles.

We have only one or two hospitals in the state that can handle certain medical procedures.

We in Hawaii are especially vulnerable to economic shocks, pandemics and a number of familiar natural disasters, such as hurricanes, tsunamis, droughts, volcanic activity, and earthquakes.

And we haven’t even mentioned the exacerbating effects of climate change which are now apparent and will only worsen in the coming years.

In other words, Hawaii is incredibly non-resilient.

Read the rest of this post at Civil Beat