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As the pandemic lockdowns began here in Hawaii in April of 2020, we wrote an essay calling for all in Hawaii to think about how to make our islands more resilient to disasters of all sorts, including economic turmoil, hurricanes, tsunamis, possible wars, etc.

One year later, we’ve seen how bad it can be when events outside of our islands unfold in ways that directly and indirectly affect us.

Thankfully, the virus has had a relatively muted impact on our residents. But the indirect effects have been heavy. Hawaii is now facing the highest unemployment rate in the nation. We previously had the lowest unemployment rate in the nation.

This heavy impact is mainly because of our over-reliance on specific industries like tourism, which comprises about 25% of our economy in normal times.

We can’t turn on a dime and create a new economy that is not reliant on tourism. We’ll likely return to a high level of reliance on tourism and the economic risks that this brings if we don’t intervene. It’s built into our economy in many ways and that will take years to transform.

We Must Diversify

If we tackle this necessary transformation now, however, in a serious way and at the scale required, we can reasonably expect that within a few years, we’ll start to see other sectors of our economy rise in terms of jobs and economic activity. This will diversify our economy and reduce the risks associated with the over-dependence on a few sectors like tourism.

Hawaii is about to take a significant step forward in this needed transformation by passing the program (HB 1176) into law. This bill recently passed through all Senate and House committees and will soon head to Governor David Ige’s desk for his signature.

We strongly support this bill. We played a role in its creation and have done our best to rally support for it along the way. We strongly support its focus on green and resiliency sector jobs and training programs. This program is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps that hired so many unemployed people in the 1930s and 1940s and built so many lasting buildings and trails in National Parks and other locations around the country.

The key thing left to do is to “think big” and fund this new program in a big way. We recommend at least $100 million for the first two years of the program and eventually to use the federal dollars that Congress has and to make it permanent.

The kinds of jobs it will fund are described in the bill itself:

“The creation of a state-administered green job corps program would provide Hawaii residents who were economically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic with opportunities to learn new skills and increase their prospects of employment within the resiliency and green sectors, including local agriculture, conservation, climate adaptation, renewable energy, cesspool conversion and technology industries.”

These are good jobs, and they are the jobs of the future. They will help make Hawaii a more resilient, equitable and sustainable place.

We urge all concerned citizens to write or call their state senator or representative and ask them to fund this new program with at least $100 million for the first two years. This is a reasonable down payment for our state’s future.