<
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://annamercury.medium.com/the-tourism-industry-is-finally-meeting-its-maker-d5c4d4323714>
"The wildfires in Maui have become the deadliest in modern American history,
surpassing even the horrific 2018 Camp Fire that razed the town of Paradise,
California and killed 85 people. I remember walking those streets a year after
the fire, the ground bald and orange, the oak trees black as charcoal, passing
brick walls and wrought iron fences with no houses behind them. Paradise looked
like Hell. In a year, Lahaina will be no different, another paradise reduced to
ash and pain.
Some forty-thousand visitors have left Maui since the wildfires began.
According to the Hawaii Tourism Agency, an average August in Maui hosts over
60,000 tourists on any given day. For the archipelago as a whole, the tourism
industry brings in nearly $2 billion per month. Tourism is Hawaii’s largest
industry, accounting for over 20% of the state’s GDP, dwarfing all other
industries, including national defense.
In an interview with
Democracy Now!, Kānaka Maoli organizer Kaniela Ing spoke
passionately about how the latest wildfires are the direct result of colonial
greed, the fires “a tragic symbol of [that] trajectory’s terminal point.”
Walking through Lahaina, Ing said, “Is like a Disneyland ride through the
colonial timeline of capitalism in Hawaii, starting from royalty, going to
whaling, sandalwood, sugar and pineapple, tourism to luxury.”
In recent days, much attention has been given by the press to the impact of
global climate change on Maui’s wildfires. Questions, too, have arisen about
inadequate preparation and mismanagement of the emergency by local officials
leading to the fires becoming so deadly.
Outside the Leftist bubble of the likes of
Democracy Now!, very little
attention has been paid to the wildfires as a direct result of colonial
capitalism, but the two cannot be disentangled.
Colonial capitalism is what gave us climate change. It also led to the seizure,
exploitation and mismanagement of Indigenous land: the diversion of water, the
destruction of wetlands, the clear-cutting of thriving ecosystems for
mono-cropping and development. It’s the same story in the forests of Northern
California as it is on the shores of Maui.
Let’s be very clear: colonial economies are not just plantations. Hawaii has
been colonized by hotels, golf courses and mega-mansions, all of which have
disrupted native ecosystems and diminished the land’s resilience to disaster.
Tourism and luxury, as Kaniela Ing said, are just another chapter in the same
imperial story.
Climate change is where that story ends. This is not a hopeful platitude, but a
necessary fact. Either this era ends with us abandoning the ethos of conquest
and extractivism and returning to more Indigenous, reciprocal relationships
with the Earth, or it ends in our extinction.
Those are our options."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
