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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our climate story of the week, and we will note that The New York Times has taken the Maui wildfires head-on in this respect with an article called How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox. We'll talk to the reporter of that article, but before we get into the science, we want to acknowledge the monumental amount of human loss that these wildfires have caused. Obviously, the latest death toll number I saw this morning was 99, but they say only a quarter of Lahaina has been searched, and they only expect to find more bodies, not more survivors by this point.

We just had to say that out loud before we talk about any science. As part of this segment, we invite your calls if you're connected to Maui in any way with remembrances or stories or descriptions or suggestions of how to help the survivors there. I'll tell you one umbrella organization that I've heard good reviews about as we go, or your questions at 212-433-WNYC. For our climate story of the week, we're going to make that scientific connection, which hopefully could help guide prevention efforts for the future.

We also want to acknowledge yesterday's major development in a previous climate story of the week that we've covered on the show. Did you hear this? A judge in Montana ruled in favor of a group of young environmentalists who sued the state for violating their right under the state constitution to a clean and healthful environment. The ruling requires climate change to be taken into account when considering applications for fossil fuel development in the state. It's the first ruling of its kind in the country on a right to a clean environment, affecting actual fossil fuel leases.

We will come back to that in more detail in a future segment, but that just happened yesterday, and I wanted to pass that along. Joining us now is the journalist on that Times story, How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox, Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation for The Times. Christopher, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Christopher Flavelle: Thanks for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: To start with, maybe the obvious, you describe Hawaii as a place defined by its lush vegetation, a far cry from the dry landscape normally associated with fire threats. Can you put some science to the word lush there? Is it moisture, or what makes Hawaii lush with so much vegetation?

Christopher Flavelle: Well, look, the island isn't monolithic, but huge portions of the state were defined by plantation agriculture, by rain forests, and by this popular perception of a place that is green and verdant. That isn't universally true, but it's becoming less true with time. I think that popular idea of a place that's almost-- It's got sort of a Garden of Eden type attribute to it, is changing fairly dramatically as climate change gets worse.

Brian Lehrer: Here's how. You write that since 1990, rainfall at a group of monitoring stations has declined by 31% in the wet season, 6% in the dry season, as measured by the University of Hawaii and University of Colorado. You cite several reasons. According to Clark University climatologist Abby Frazier, one is that as temperatures increase, the clouds over Hawaii are thinner. Can you explain that mechanism and its result?

Christopher Flavelle: To a degree, as temperatures rise, you get the base of those clouds rising, but the top of the cloud doesn't get higher as the cloud gets thinner, and as clouds get thinner, they produce less precipitation. That's change one. Separately, you get storm tracks moving north, which means a lot of the big storms that used to drop significant amounts of rain on the islands are no longer hitting the islands, so less rainfall from the storms.

Brian Lehrer: Because those big storms are associated with heat, yes?

Christopher Flavelle: That's right. Right. As ocean currents change and temperatures change, those storm paths also change. Then finally--

Brian Lehrer: Or just they're associated with a certain range of heat, so if Hawaii is getting hotter but the areas north of it are also getting hotter, and it's those temperatures north of Hawaii that are more associated with those strong storms, then that's part of what's happening here, as I understand it.

Christopher Flavelle: It certainly sounds plausible. The researchers I've spoken with say there's such a confluence of factors going on here, that they present these findings with a heavy dose of humility and say no one really has a good handle on how strong these patterns are, and also, the different range of causes behind them. The one thing they're sure of is the end result, which is less precipitation, and not just in a year-over-year sense, but decade over decade. It's a long-term trend that they don't see changing.

Brian Lehrer: You say 40 years of a weaker La Niña weather pattern. Can you explain La Niña and its relevance to this?

Christopher Flavelle: Oh, I wouldn't be able to do it justice. The key point, though, is that, typically, La Niña produces wetter seasons and wetter storms and wetter years, and that will offset the drier years, and so, in the aggregates, you get a consistent [unintelligible 00:05:59] a consistent amount of precipitation in the long run and that as La Niña weakens, because we think of climate factors, the result is the dry years remain dry, but what used to be the wetter years are less wet than they were. On balance, the trend points towards, again, declining precipitation decade over decade.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you can do the science to this degree, but I think the extreme heat that much of the US mainland has experienced this summer has been attributed to the weather pattern they call El Niño. Is that the opposite of La Niña?

Christopher Flavelle: [chuckles] Here we've reached the edge of my knowledge. The thing with temperature that's very important is that these two things come together. You get less precipitation on the islands, but also, as you mentioned, rising temperatures. Obviously, some years are cooler than others, but in general, those two things together, less moisture and rising temperatures, really create a dried-out landscape that then, as we said, is a tinderbox for blazes.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. We are in our climate story of the week, which we do every Tuesday on the show. Our guest is Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation for The New York Times. He's got a story with the headline, How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox, and we do have time for a few phone calls.

I don't know if anybody listening right now is connected to Hawaii or particularly Maui in any way. I know it's five time zones earlier than us doing the show in New York, but is anyone out there right now with connections to Maui or even elsewhere in Hawaii, anything you want to say or ask about the connection between the horror that's still unfolding there and climate change or anything on how to help the people there or anything else related from anyone listening? Questions or comments at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate change adaptation for The Times.

You can also text a comment or a question to our number, 212-433-WNYC. Christopher, since your beat is climate change adaptation, that is living with and adapting to the effects of climate change even as we try to prevent more of it, how to your knowledge has Hawaii been adapting, given the gradual decades-long warming trend and drying trend that you've been describing?

Christopher Flavelle: I've been making calls on just that topic, and my sense is that there's a lot of work still to be done. There's one factor, in particular, the people I speak with point to, which is the mix of vegetation on Hawaii. In particular, they say that as these large-scale plantations, sugarcane and some pineapple, as they shut down in recent decades, they were replaced by fallow lands overrun by non-native invasive grasses. Those invasive grasses are extremely flammable. The result is you get this heightened fire risk and what they call fuel load.

I think a lot of the adaptation that probably has to happen in Hawaii will revolve around finding ways to change the land use so that less land is given over to these grasses and more is either used for agriculture, which would help also reduce the food burden in Hawaii, or perhaps reforestation. A lot of the woods that had covered the islands 150 years ago have been cut down, so there's a long track to do in terms of reducing fire risk through vegetation changes. I think the debate will be, what's the best way to get there given that this fire risk, though not new, is much more pronounced and urgent than maybe people realized?

Brian Lehrer: In fact, to that point, you report that in the area around Lahaina, longstanding sugarcane farms stopped operating around 1990, the land no longer irrigated. Does that have anything to do with climate change?

Christopher Flavelle: It doesn't. I think the reason that those large-scale agricultural operations, I'm told, were moved from Hawaii to other parts of the world is mostly cost. As with most climate shocks, it's never just one thing. It's usually a mix of different climate factors intersecting with other economic changes, demographic changes that produce a volatile brew. That's the case in Hawaii. There will be no simple fix that will change that, but again, people keep on telling me if we're going to have to live with rising temperatures, endless precipitation, you've got to change the vegetation cover on the islands. That is not easy.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You even report that the underlying threats that we've been discussing were amplified in this case by Hurricane Dora, which passed near Hawaii last week. We don't usually think of hurricanes, all that rain, and fires in the same breath. How do they connect?

Christopher Flavelle: Absolutely, and one more climate shock. The winds from Dora, though the storm was hundreds of miles away, the winds still reached the islands, and the result was you got some of the winds of a hurricane but none of the water and rain from a hurricane, so just really intense. I heard 60, 70, maybe 80-mile-per-hour winds from that storm pushing through and moving, fanning the flames from these fires. The result was a really tough situation for firefighters and residents because the flames moved so fast.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Maryott in Manhattan, who was born in Hawaii, she says. Maryott, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Maryott: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can.

Maryott: Aloha. Thank you for taking my call. I just want to first say real quick, I know it's short on time, but my heart goes out to the Lahui and the people of Maui. We are standing with you. I just have a question for the author of this piece. I read the piece and I know that you commented on the grass and the native species being very flammable. I would like to know what your take is, how this is a climate disaster, but it also feels like it's a colonial disaster as a direct result of the fossil fuel and military-industrial complex that's on Hawaii.

My ancestors had a system of ahupuaʻa, which was a land division, which led from the Mauna, the mountain, all the way to the sea. That's how it used to be divided. The water from the top of the mountain would stream down into the waters of the sea. That is how we fed our people for a hundred years. I just would like to know if the writer of the story could speak more on that as a result also of the devastation and the complete loss that we've seen in Maui, and not only Maui but all of the Hawaiian Islands.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for that historical context. I don't know if that's on your beat enough that you know anything about it, Christopher, but do you?

Christopher Flavelle: It's absolutely true. I've been looking at this for my next story on Hawaii. The caller is absolutely right. There's been a long-term shift in land ownership, and the term colonialism is one that I often hear used in this context. The result is the shift from the system that the caller described to one of large landholders and plantation agriculture.

That's, again, a big part of the story of how we got here, how we got to the point where you have large plots of land that are so owned in many cases by a small number of large landowners but are left fallow because that large-scale agriculture is sometimes not economically feasible. Absolutely, the result is you get hundreds of years of change bringing us to this point where rising temperatures and reduced rainfall coupled with a vegetation cover that is very flammable get you to the tragedy that we're dealing with now.

Brian Lehrer: Maryott, I wonder if given your connections to Hawaii you have any thoughts on how any of our listeners who might want to help in some way might best help, whether there's any best place to donate money in your individual opinion or anything else.

Maryott: Well, I can say that for the Lahui and the Kiai that are here in the Moku of Manhattan, there's a group of us meeting at Washington Square Park tonight at six o'clock. We're standing in a protocol in ceremony with those on Hawaii that are standing in the same protocol at noon today. That's just something very small, and we are donating directly to those families. I can send you, Brian, if you're interested, there are a lot of links going around.

I know that the Hawaiian Council is donating up to 1.5 million matching. The best thing is getting it directly into the hands of the people of Maui. I know that some people are skeptical with a lot of different Venmo accounts, I can understand that, but if that is something that you would be interested in, Brian, I'm happy to do that. I'm sorry, I don't have it off the top of my head.

Brian Lehrer: Sure, I'd love to get that and pass some of that along on a future show. Hang on, and the producer will take your contact or give you the right email address to write to off the air. Producer's heads up on that. I will mention that I have one indirect connection to Maui, and I have heard a positive review for a group called the Hawaii Community Foundation, which has something now called the Maui Strong Fund. Apparently, that's an umbrella organization for various groups out there. I'm just passing that one along because it did come to me through somebody with connections there.

Christopher, of course, we're still dealing with the unfolding recovery operation with so much of the destroyed area and presumably human victims not even accounted for yet, recognizing that they say three-quarters of Lahaina not yet even explored for how many people may have been killed there. Still looking forward, does this seminal event for Hawaii suggest a new generation of adaptations for you as a climate adaptation reporter, that they might consider for the future? Because climate change isn't going away. At least it's not going away fast.

Christopher Flavelle: That's right. I think it's even bigger than Hawaii. This has been reported the deadliest wildfire in the US, even with the preliminary numbers that we have now, the deadliest fire in the US in almost a century in modern history. I think the shock here and the real importance here is to remind people this can happen even in places you don't expect it. This is not just a Hawaii problem. I think this hopefully will spur more attention toward adaptation measures, not just in Hawaii, but around the US because if there's a message here, and it's a grim one, but the message is really, no place can count itself as safe from these kinds of disasters, whether fires or storms or floods or what have you.

My hope as always with this beat is that people will pay more attention to the risks they face and better protect themselves. The question is how and who will pay the cost, but definitely-- I hate the phrase wake-up call, but hopefully, it will be a bit of a wake-up call to everyone who maybe didn't think this was a threat they had to worry about.

Brian Lehrer: If every climate event this year was a wake-up call and nobody's been getting any sleep, one more call with a connection to Maui. Ben in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ben.

Ben: Hi. I just want to say I appreciate the past caller and everything The New York Times has been reporting. I've been teaching a masterclass. I'm a classical guitarist on Maui for 24 years. I have a direct connection to the Jodo Mission, very dear friends of mine. I just want to read what the daughter, Maya, just wrote to me. "As in all disasters, this is a marathon. Most people in Lahaina have not only lost their homes and almost everything they own, they've also lost their jobs. Rebuilding our temple and town will take years and much funds, so any amount is appreciated."

I'll also send a link to you all for donating to the mission. I've been in touch with a lot of friends who are there, and it's huge. I really appreciate your guest, especially what he just said. Thank you very much for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: Ben, thank you very much. Obviously, we can hear the pain in your voice, and we leave it there with Christopher Flavelle, who covers climate adaptation for The New York Times. His story is called How Climate Change Turned Lush Hawaii Into a Tinderbox. Christopher, thank you for joining us.

Christopher Flavelle: Thanks for having me.

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