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Hawaii Passes Law To Make State Carbon Neutral By 2045 (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: In a little less than three decades, Hawaii plans to be carbon neutral -- he most ambitious climate goal in the United States. Governor David Ige signed a bill today committing to make the state fully carbon neutral by 2045, along with a second bill that will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii. A third bill requires new building projects to consider how high sea levels will rise in their engineering decisions. The state is especially vulnerable to climate change -- sea level rise, for example, threatens to cause $19 billion in economic losses -- and that's one of the reasons that the new laws had support.
Transportation is a challenge -- while the state is planning for a future where cars run on renewable electricity, it also relies heavily on planes and ships, which will take longer to move to electric charging, and which Hawaii can't directly control. "Those are global transportation networks that don't have easy substitutes right now," Glenn says. "That's one of the reasons why we really want to pursue the carbon offset program, because we know we're going to continue to be dependent on shipping and aviation, and if they continue to burn carbon to bring us our tourists and our goods and our supplies and our food, then we want to try to have a way to sequester the impact we're causing by importing all this stuff to our islands." The government plans to sell carbon offsets to pay to plant native trees, which can help absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow. The state is also working to become more self-sufficient. The governor aims to double local food production by 2030; right now, around 90% of what residents and tourists eat in Hawaii -- 6 million pounds of food a day -- comes from somewhere else, on planes or ships.
Transportation is a challenge -- while the state is planning for a future where cars run on renewable electricity, it also relies heavily on planes and ships, which will take longer to move to electric charging, and which Hawaii can't directly control. "Those are global transportation networks that don't have easy substitutes right now," Glenn says. "That's one of the reasons why we really want to pursue the carbon offset program, because we know we're going to continue to be dependent on shipping and aviation, and if they continue to burn carbon to bring us our tourists and our goods and our supplies and our food, then we want to try to have a way to sequester the impact we're causing by importing all this stuff to our islands." The government plans to sell carbon offsets to pay to plant native trees, which can help absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow. The state is also working to become more self-sufficient. The governor aims to double local food production by 2030; right now, around 90% of what residents and tourists eat in Hawaii -- 6 million pounds of food a day -- comes from somewhere else, on planes or ships.
So just how are they going to offset that???
Puerto Rico needs to replace all the island infrastructure with this right now, forget 2045.
It won't ever work!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Given the volcanic activity on Hawaii I can't imagine it ever being carbon neutral.
This is going to be a difficult, uphill battle for Hawaii given their recent growth in production of locally sourced, volcanic S(O2)...
No one who passed it will be in office in 2045. As such, they don't own ultimate accountability for actually making it happen, but they can pat themselves on the back for 'driving it to happen'.
Reminds me of when IBM CEO declared a certain crazy fiscal target for 5 years out, and immediately retired so it would be someone else's fault the target was not feasible.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Any law which has a deadline so far in advance that no one who votes on it will be around to see it come to fruition is, pretty much by definition, "feel good legislation". ie: horseshit.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
a second bill that will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii
I bet the recipients of the funds will be reading like a who's who of Hawaii's political donors.
It is almost 30 years in future.
Hodja Nasreddin once offered Persian Shakh to teach his donkey speak and read in 30 years. Then he explained that either Shakh or donkey or Hodja himself would definitely die in 30 years, so he wouldn't be punished for breaking this promise.
It seems that Hawaian lawmakers expect that either they will be dead or state would be submerged by 2045.
I mean yeah, isn't all you have to do is scale up your typical recreational drone to airplane size?
If Hawaii pays me $50 per day I promise not to fly to Hawaii. This will save a lot of carbon for them.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
They're going to trigger a mini fauna extinction on their tiny islands if they pull this stunt and then they're going to blame it on climate change just like California did after they spent 40 years planting the wrong pine-trees (the type that are susceptible to pine beatles infestations)
John, Paul, George, and Ringo?
which helped to exasperate
Yes, this is exasperating...
the frequency of forrest fires... Sigh
Gump?
I have some other suggestions for laws. 1. Forbid bad weather on weekends 2. Eliminate bad manners in children 3. and so on.
Transportation is a challenge -- while the state is planning for a future where cars run on renewable electricity
Given Hawaii is a bunch of volcanoes rising out of the ocean, I don't understand why Hawaiian cars even need engines since they only need to roll downhill.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hawaii is, mostly, a sunny place. Yet on the Big Island, I see very few solar panels on buildings. In fact the only reference I've seen anytime recently was some dude in the houses near the current eruption who said "I got my solar panels and batteries out, phew, saved $4000 of gear". If Hawaii is serious about reducing CO2 emissions, every house should have solar cells and many should have large storage batteries too.
The mostly fossil fuel-generated electricity is expensive (most expensive in the USA) so electric cars are less of a win compared to cost of petroleum fuels than in the rest of the USA. The average Hawaiian is not rich - buying Teslas is not within their budget. If they had solar cells on their buildings then the incremental cost of recharging an electric car would be far less than buying in power.
Honolulu, like every other hot Asian or American city, is power hungry. Yet there, I still see little solar power, either on buildings or nearby on the ground.
Meanwhile, Hawaii may have been created by volcanoes, but in practice the volcanoes have moved on from Oahu. So Honolulu cannot have a nearby geothermal power plant (source: https://www.hawaiianelectric.c...) The geothermal power plant on the Big Island, at Puna, is currently being reclaimed by Pele - lava flows have mostly wrecked it and that's a risk wherever you get near the hottest ground. Very hot ground is near magma, which may well erupt nearby unpredictably. Not great for an expensive capital investment. Not great for anything you are betting to keep the lights on with (Puna only supplied 20% of Big Island power when it was destroyed, if that had been 80% there would be a lot more problems on the island).
Hawaii doesn't have a lot of precipitation and large rivers to dam, unlike Iceland. So we're back to solar and storage.
Hawaiians, where are your solar panels? Your plan is bust without them.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"