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One of the tragedies of our modern system of governance is that we spend more time talking about problems than actually solving them. We are great at forecasting future threats, but terrible at being ready when the threat actually manifests. This problem is not unique to Hawaii, but has, in recent decades, become symptomatic of a greater malaise of inaction and indifference in Western democracies.

As an example, when the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) broke out in the early 2000s, both national and state authorities knew that it was only a question of time before another coronavirus would threaten global health.

Billions of dollars were spent in collaboration, research and planning for the next virus over the almost two decades that followed, but when Covid-19 emerged on the world stage, it was as if we were all caught unprepared, with only theories, novelty products and no resources on hand to immediately respond to the problem.

We are seeing a similar pattern in our response to the future disasters that may result from climate change. While much effort has been placed into attempts to prevent climate change, the actual preparation and hardening for its inevitable arrival has been scarce.

, “Climate change could directly affect the Nation’s critical infrastructure. In U.S. coastal regions, rising sea levels, higher storm surge, and increased erosion could damage or destroy critical infrastructure.” We all say that, but we certainly aren’t acting like this is the case in terms of our actual advance work.

Now, Hawaii may not be able to singlehandedly stop climate change, but it can take immediate measures so that in the future, we are prepared to face known threats such as sea level rise, destruction of natural or cultural resources and impacts to populations.

A bill scheduled for hearing Tuesday, , seeks to change the visitor policy of the state to “minimize negative economic, environmental, and social impacts … Involve Hawaii residents in decisions that affect their lives and life changes” and “make positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage for the maintenance of Hawaii’s diversity.”

These proposed changes are praiseworthy as they point to the fact that the visitor industry should be responsible for upkeep of our local infrastructure as well as potentially serving to help Hawaii prepare for future environmental challenges.

Taken together with bills like Senate , which seeks to address coastal erosion, the Legislature has no shortage of well-intentioned bills that will either add offices, task forces or even funds to pay for climate change mitigation, but as admirable as these may be on paper, we are still not ready for the worst case scenario.

The problem is that our local approach to planning is to create expensive task forces that write expensive strategic plans that no one follows through on, and then when the thing we meant to stop arrives, Hawaii finds itself – pardon the pun – “underwater” and faced with an intractable situation.

Anyone can write a bill, sit on a task force, come up with ideas, print them in a glossy book and tell state and county agencies, “This is the plan, now do it.” Anyone can be a prophet and predict a crisis and publish it in an ignored memo. The oldest trick in the bureaucracy playbook is to deflect failure by saying, “We came up with a good plan, but no one implemented it.” Well, that’s not good enough when lives are at stake.

In short, we move too slowly where it counts most. We have to take action now. If sea level rises, or if severe storms become more common, we will find out in the worst possible way which areas will be flooded before we have time to relocate things.

If temperatures rise, we will discover this gradual, slow-moving problem in a sudden and inconvenient future day when many elderly die in a power blackout, or heatstroke ravages the population. (And let me guess, on that day, our local leaders will say, “It is what it is, just deal with it.”)

We should assume that climate change will happen no matter what we do. That means we should bite the bullet now and begin building, relocating and deploying mitigating technologies as if the worst is already here. We’ve talked enough about this topic, and we’ve got the funding; if the threat is real, then act as if it is real.

Do we need to move government and commercial buildings? Do we need to relocate cultural artifacts? Do we need to build a different kind of Honolulu  to prevent future heat problems? Why is there a disconnect between what we are forecasting and what we are actually doing in the present to prepare for it?

Stop with the endless interagency task forces, stop with the conferences, stop with the forecasting and give us something tangible to prepare Hawaii for the future. Alexander Solzhenitsyn , “No one on Earth has any other way left but upward.” And in Hawaii, I truly believe that.