Newsletter: Do wildfire-ravaged Maui a favor — don’t fly there so much

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

It feels odd, sitting here in Los Angeles, to write about hellish wildfires from afar. Inhaling smoke from brush and trees burning in the local mountains may cause extreme distress, but it’s never truly a surprise in a drought-prone region thought to be on the front line of climate change.

But Maui? And Lahaina, a historic town on the island’s west end that draws tourists from all over the world, especially California? This is a place where people go to escape the problems at home, and wildfires are one major problem of life in California. Now, with much of the world experiencing record heat amid a climate emergency — and remember, we’re still months away from El Niño’s expected winter peak — devastating fires are immiserating and killing people who’ve never had to deal with them. Even in places considered tropical paradises, like Lahaina, where several dozen people died in a fire that swept down the brushy slopes of the west Maui mountains and engulfed the historic town.

Reading about the devastation and watching videos of desperate tourists and residents fleeing into the ocean, I was reminded of a letter to the editor we published late last month fingering air travel as a driver of the global warming that surely set the stage for wildfire devastation in Maui. As anyone who’s been to Maui or any other Hawaiian island knows (and I’ve been there twice), visiting the most isolated population center on the planet requires a long-haul overseas flight from even the closest city on the American mainland. Given that fact, the letter seems eerily prescient:

“Most people take it as their God-given right to hop on a plane any time they wish to travel for pleasure, with no thought that their actions may in some way contribute to the terrible natural disasters the whole world is experiencing. Sadly, the continuing destruction — due to fires, floods, landslides, pollution and loss of flora and fauna — of those very places people want to jet off to may be the only thing that slows or stops this travel altogether.”

Californians need to reevaluate their relationship with Hawaii. Naka Nathaniel, a columnist for the Honolulu Civil Beat, laments the effects of tourism and marketing that have made the islands less livable for their natives: “I’m fearful that this horrible fire is going to push more Hawaiians out of Hawai’i. While we love our California cousins, we hope you resist the marketing and help deflect Hawai’i from this course that keeps us in a state of crisis.”

Hawaii and California’s Central Valley have something in common: High housing costs in L.A. and the San Francisco Bay Area are pushing up home prices in cities like Fresno, making them unaffordable for locals. Fresno native Alicia Olivarez implores leaders in the state’s coastal metropolises to fix their housing shortages, which have “exported the hardship to the Central Valley and beyond.”

His reward for helping write the surprise Netflix sensation “Suits”: $259.71. Ethan Drogin wrote the episode “Identity Crisis” for “Suits,” a show that drew 3.1 billion views in one week alone for Netflix and NBCUniversal’s Peacock. His residuals check last quarter was for less than $300. “This is why writers and actors are on strike,” Drogin writes.

When will Republicans get the message that people want their abortion rights? In Ohio, a measure that would have made amending the state Constitution by popular vote all but impossible failed resoundingly. The Republican backers of Issue 1 made no secret of their wish to prevent voters from enshrining abortion rights into the Ohio Constitution. The Times’ editorial board says the lesson is clear: “People support abortion rights — and democracy.”

Georgia might beat the feds at holding Trump accountable. UCLA law professor Richard L. Hasen says the various state investigations into the former president, including the one in Fulton County, Ga., aren’t just a sideshow to the larger federal case: “State crimes are not subject to pardon by the president. To the extent that Trump needs to be held accountable and deterred from future election subversion or other crimes through prosecution, the state route is as promising, if not more so, than the federal one.”

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• LZ Granderson: Video of Montgomery racial brawl shows it’s not enough to be “not racist”
• Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s indictment reflects the failures of our populist passions
• Jackie Calmes: Why does Justice Alito keep making things worse for the Supreme Court?

From the Op-Ed desk

• Grocery stores used to be my happy place. Then they started locking up the detergent
• I treat schizophrenia. It’s getting hard to distinguish its delusions from our current digital reality
• Seeing the watery future of climate change up close in Venice

From the Editorial Board

• “Barbie” is a billion-dollar milestone for women in Hollywood
• L.A.’s key justice reform survives court challenge. Time to pick up the pace
• California’s strong gun laws need better enforcement. AB 732 could help

Letters to the Editor

• Arizona needs an aggressive solar mandate to power all those A/C units
• “It is literally impossible to be a woman” — the highlight of “Barbie”
• “Oppenheimer” doesn’t breed fatalism