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The Tourism Industry Is Finally Meeting Its Maker
Climate change has brought the colonial roots of tourism to the spotlight
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…
