Republican Rep. Byron Donalds blamed “green new deal stuff” for the devastating wildfire in Maui, saying an electric company ignored “the basic things.”
Maui County filed a lawsuit against Maui Electric Company, Limited, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., Hawaiʻi Electric Light Company, Inc., and Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. for allegedly failing to shut down equipment on Aug. 7, when the National Weather Service issued a “red flag” warning, ABC News reported. The deadly wildfire that destroyed many buildings in the town of Lahaina on Aug. 8, killed at least 114 people and left hundreds missing. (RELATED: ‘Are You Freaking Kidding Me?’: Former FEMA Head Blasts Hawaii Officials’ Focus On ‘Equity’ Prior To Fire)
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“I don’t believe in man-made climate change, that is number one. Number two, even if you believe in climate change, quote, unquote what are the actual solutions? What the Democrats want us to do is to send money and treasure over to the Chinese so they can strip mine the planet, basically dump a lot of emissions into the atmosphere and give us solar panels and windmills,” Donalds told “Kudlow” guest host David Asman. “Even with the solar panels and windmills it will not help the American people be able to survive if there are higher temperatures because you need massive amounts of electricity to run air-conditioning, to run refrigerators, so on, so forth.”
“What people on the left who really dig into this climate change stuff really want for us to do is to unwind some of the very fabric of our economy. That doesn’t make any sense,” Donalds continued. “You need fossil fuels. You need energy production and that primarily comes from natural gas, fossil fuels and what we should be doing is embracing nuclear power, not going down this green new deal stuff because frankly that is what happened in Hawaii. There was so much pressure on the electric company from officials both locally in Hawaii, but also the federal government, to chase down renewable energy. They weren’t paying attention to the basic things like making sure that you don’t have limbs touching power lines and that you actually clear out the underbrush so that the fuel for a fire which is fresh wood and other things like that, is not laying around to catch fire and nearly burn down an area.”
The West Maui Land Company accused M. Kaleo Manuel, an official with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), of delaying a response to a request to use water to refill reservoirs used by the Maui Fire Department to fight the wildfire, Hawaii News Now reported.
“I’ll tell you this: This is much more after man-made disaster, what happened in Maui, than being caused by the planet,” Donalds concluded.
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