Maui’s Sustainable Future

There are competing visions for Maui’s future.  One is more of the same type of development we have had for the past 40 years: hotels, condominiums, upscale subdivisions and workforce housing, all connected by collector roads lined with shopping malls.  The alternative is more complex and more appealing, one in which we overcome our depending on foreign oil, imported food and planeloads of visitors arriving in ever greater numbers.  Maui currently spends north of $700 million importing fuel and about $500 million bringing in food.  There is a movement underway to generate vastly greater amounts of energy using the winds over our mountains, the waves off our shores and the abundant sunshine the pours down most days.  Even our vast sugar fields are now being considered for huge solar arrays.  The network of tunnels and ditches that has brought north shore water into the cane fields can be used to grow bamboo, one of the best carbon sinks on earth; the bamboo can be burned for fuel and the resulting biochar will be use to regenerate our depleted soils.  That is a superior winning strategy if it can be pulled off.  Not all of this is destined, but much of it is in the planning state.  Hotels, condos, business, farms—all are shifting from carbon burning and polluting technologies to these alternative technologies.  This is a great green opportunity for the innovators.  One of my favorites is the Hawaii Electric Vehicle Network that plans to bring in hundreds of electric cars.  Isn’t Maui the perfect place to experience the future?