Lawmakers in Hawai‘i right now are looking at the Kona Low flooding and using it as ammunition for one of the most surreal bills under consideration.
I’m talking about Senate Bill 1166, introduced by Sen. Chris Lee (D) in 2025 and revived this month by Rep. Scot Matayoshi (D) in the House. The bill would allow insurance companies to reclaim the money they pay out for a disaster if that disaster is attributed to climate change.
From whom? From the fossil fuel industry.
The bill predates the recent Kona Low flooding. In fact, it has more to do with the Lahaina fire, but fans of the legislation are already looking at flooded communities and looking for someone to blame. And more importantly, they’re looking for some deep pockets so we don’t have to pay for the recovery ourselves.
“Given the climate disasters happening right now, we wanted some sort of vehicle moving to address those,” said Kāneʻohe Rep. Scot Matayoshi, in a sympathetic article at Civil Beat. “It’s worth a shot.”
The problem that the bill purports to solve is that insurers have been pulling out of Hawai‘i, or greatly increasing property insurance premiums, following major, expensive payouts such as those stemming from the lethal Lahaina wildfire.
That’s a real problem. A pressing problem. This bill answers it with a metaphysical claim that nothing bad would ever happen in Hawai‘i if it weren’t for climate change, and all climate change is entirely due to evil, dishonest fossil fuel companies.
You have to read it for yourself to see the utter certainty on display. It is packed, top to bottom, with assertions passed off as "findings" and inconvenient truths left out entirely.
One of those inconvenient truths is that human failings by people right here in Hawai‘i might be responsible for damages in a disaster. The bill doesn’t allow for that. It preemptively aims insurance companies at the fossil fuel industry instead.
In that, it’s doing something similar to the $4 billion master settlement over Lahaina rammed through by Gov. Josh Green and the Hawai‘i Supreme Court over the objections of the insurance industry. This matter is still tied up in the courts, mainly because Hawai‘i just decided, on its own, that insurance companies could not go looking for responsible third parties to get their money back in the very special case, and the insurance companies are appealing that.
And there are indeed responsible third parties. Hawaiian Electric Co., the state of Hawai‘i , Kamehameha Schools, Spectrum Oceanic LLC, Hawaiian Telcom and affiliates of West Maui Land Co. are paying out that $4 billion dollars because, regardless of what role, if any, that climate change played, all these entities did things, or failed to do things, which in turn allowed a wildfire to destroy a city and kill 102 people. The settlement is their admission.
Normally, when something like that happens, the insurance companies would pay out benefits to policyholders then seek reimbursement from the entities found responsible for the disaster. This is called subrogation. But local government told the insurance companies that they can’t have any of the $4 billion. They weren’t even allowed into negotiations.
In this way, the State of Hawai‘i itself — not climate change — is creating the conditions causing insurance companies to pull out of Hawai‘i and raise premiums. Gov. Green and all these other local power players have told the insurance industry, “If you do business here, you will be left holding the bag.”
The insurance industry, quite reasonably, finds this unacceptable. Would you want to be punished for doing your job?
So back to SB1166. It’s trying to preserve the same kind of total unaccountability for local government and local power players for any future disaster that can remotely be attributed to climate change — and all disasters will get attributed to climate change, believe me — while giving insurance companies a big, fat third-party target in the fossil fuel industry they can go after instead.
It’s an insurance dodge, disguised as climate justice.
Now, I want to talk about that disguise a bit, because it’s thoroughly dishonest.
The bill accuses Big Oil of lying about the potential risks of carbon dioxide’s role in climate change and equates them with tobacco companies using junk science to hide the risks of cigarette smoking. Hawai‘i’s lawmakers are trying to absolve themselves of their role on our fossil fuel-based economy by saying they were misled about oil.
Except they then cite decades of scientific papers and news media coverage about the potential risks of carbon dioxide’s role in climate change. We’ve all been hearing this, since the late 1980s at least, pretty much every damn day.
So Hawai‘i knew all along, and kept on using the oil anyway.
And why not? It made us all rich. These people advancing this bill — the lawmakers, those in the public who support it — have enjoyed every benefit of modernity that fossil fuels provided.
When young Scot Matayoshi headed to Claremont McKenna College for his BA in government, did he swim? Did he take a sailboat?
What do you think?
I think he flew.
Are Lee and Matayoshi telling us that if we went back a 150 years, and the coal and oil companies said, “Here’s the 20th century we’re offering, but it might possibly raise the temperature a couple of degrees,” are they telling us that the people in the past would’ve declined?
“Good heavens, no! You keep your abundance, Mr. Fossil Fuel. We’d rather sit here in poverty, in rooms lit by candles, burning wood to cook every meal. We love women washing our clothes by hand in a tub! We love grinding men down with dangerous, laborious construction methods! We love food supplies without refrigeration! We love streets filled with horse poop as we cruelly force these majestic beasts to pull our trolleys and delivery wagons! We love dark streets and hand-pumped water! We love having 70% of the population engaged in back-breaking agriculture!”
Of course not. Of course they wouldn’t. They'd say, "Bring on the air conditioning, please! If the seas rise a little, we'll just scoot back from the shore."
These people now bemoaning modernity and searching for scapegoats have no idea what they’re talking about. They have never experienced a pre-modern life and apparently lack the curiosity and imagination to contemplate how lucky they are to be alive now.
How lucky? This lucky:
If all that prosperity is a crime then every one of us is guilty.
A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.
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A. Kam Napier can be reached at kam@alohastatedaily.com.
