Part 2: An Opportunity for Climate Leadership

Last month’s 2024 Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises ironically failed to address the greatest threat that humankind has ever faced: the unprecedented destabilization of our climate.

Fortunately, this month, an Army draft environmental impact statement (EIS) provides the Hawaiʻi community a unique opportunity to continue our longstanding climate leadership, and demand that the U.S. military more fully contemplate its historical and ongoing role in this existential crisis.

Hawaiʻi has long been a model for climate action. Most recently, in early July, 14 ʻōpio, mostly Kānaka ʻŌiwi, made international news after prevailing in their years-long legal campaign to decarbonize our islands’ transportation sector, as required by law.

The ambitious settlement agreement in the Nāvahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation lawsuit, signed by Gov. Josh Green, now signals to the world, once again, that our islands are willing to do our part in this humanity-wide fight for survival.

Notably, the settlement is rooted in, and reaffirms, a timeless commitment to aloha ʻāina and to future generations that may be the key to a hopeful planetary future: from early Kingdom laws that enshrined ʻāina stewardship in land tenure and resource management, to precedent-setting supreme court rulings and constitutional amendments establishing the public trust in water, to more recent statutory commitments to community-based stewardship models and unprecedented clean energy standards.

Hawaiʻi has a rich history of thinking and acting beyond the short-sighted Western economic assumptions that have now placed our our Earth in peril.

This month presents yet another opportunity for Hawaiʻi to carry this legacy forward, and have a potentially outsized impact in the war against climate change.

The U.S. Army is currently accepting written comments, through August 7, on a draft EIS for its “retention” of “ceded” lands on Oʻahu; lands it has leased from the state for the last six decades. Public comments regarding the need to more fully assess the climate impacts of such “retention” could force a conversation on what it will truly take to ensure our long-term security, and survival.

For example, the EIS is required to assess the direct, indirect, secondary, and cumulative climate-related impacts of the Army’s future use of the leased Oʻahu lands. These arguably include impacts associated with the larger strategy of Indo-Pacific “deterrence” for which Army Gen. Charles Flynn claims the lands are essential.

Such impacts would include: the cumulative reduction of our long-term food security, by the occupation and unremediated contamination of historically abundant agricultural lands which, in turn, contributes to Hawaiʻi’s climate-vulnerable dependence on imported food; the continued disconnection from and harm to ʻāina that disproportionately affects Native Hawaiian health and wellbeing which will be increasingly challenged by climate destabilization; and the carbon footprint and impacts of the national and multinational exercises that would depend upon the retention of these lands, as well as that of the United States’ “rivals” who will only increase their own military carbon footprints to “deter” the U.S.

The current draft EIS fails to evaluate these concerns.

Cumulative impacts on food security and Native Hawaiian health and wellbeing are not assessed in the broader context of climate destabilization – which the Department of Defense (DoD) has an immense role in accelerating.

Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are vaguely and simply described in the EIS as the same as those associated with current training activities. There is no discussion of the overall impact of GHG emissions over time and on adjacent areas, or of the cumulative, indirect, and secondary GHG impacts of the larger deterrence strategies that rely on the continued military use of these lands.

Critically, by neglecting to adequately evaluate these impacts, the EIS also fails to describe how they could be mitigated, especially with the DoD’s vast resources and status as the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels.

Instead, some of the many possible mitigation measures that could and should be discussed include:

1. The development and widespread sharing of decarbonization technology, supportive infrastructure, and other resources with other militaries and civilian populations;
2. Concrete benchmarks for the reduction of carbon-intensive training and other activities to the bare minimum, and for the restoration and return of lands and waters to Indigenous stewardship; and
3. The continual tracking of the full range of threats the climate crisis poses to the United States and the planet.

Comments submitted by the community on these issues will require the Army to respond in some form – starting a conversation that has been neglected for far too long.

A sufficient number of comments would also send a clear message to the U.S. military: Hawaiʻi will not let the Department of “Defense” turn a blind eye to a future of destruction and devastation that it may be hastening for our ʻāina and our children – and we, and the rest of the Pacific, and the world, will be watching its response.