Fellows mentioned in this story: Jeff Mikulina

From Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

1. What is at stake with the advisory council’s initial green fee recommendations?

What’s at stake is whether Hawaii chooses to act at the scale this moment demands. Climate change is already affecting life in the islands. Wildfire risk is escalating, shorelines are eroding, and chronic flooding threatens more than $19 billion in assets by 2100. The costs of inaction are already appearing in insurance markets, infrastructure repairs and increasingly severe disasters.

The green fee’s modest increase to the transient accommodations tax is projected to generate roughly $100 million annually. That is meaningful funding, but it sits against an estimated $500 million to $1 billion in annual climate resilience needs statewide. In the first year alone, more than $2 billion in eligible project ideas were submitted.

The council’s Year 1 recommendations — about $42 million each for environmental stewardship, climate and hazard resilience and sustainable tourism — reflect Act 96’s three equal pillars. The stakes now are whether Hawaii begins closing this resilience gap or continues paying far higher costs later through disaster recovery, infrastructure damage, and economic disruption.

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