The Civil Beat Editorial Board Interview: Hawaiʻi's Climate Advisory Team

By Civil Beat Editorial Board

Tell us what the Climate Advisory Team is. And by the way, how did you come up with such a clever acronym — CAT?

Chris Benjamin: The governor gets full credit for that. We had nothing to do with that. But it works because it’s also short for catastrophe and it works in a lot of ways. The governor called me in late April, early May and asked if I would chair this group, and it was really very much undefined at that point. But what his goal was was to assemble a team that would make recommendations ahead of the 2025 legislative session to help address and improve Hawaii’s readiness for future disasters.

Despite the very broad name of the Climate Advisory Team, we really are not focused on all things climate. We’re not working on climate mitigation, for example. We’re not looking at those long-term stressors that come from climate change, like rising sea levels and heat. Those influence the likelihood of disasters.

But our specific mandate is to look at Hawaii’s readiness for the next disaster, assuming and recognizing that we will have more storms and more climate events. And then the task that we have with that in mind is to come up with a package of legislation and potentially non-legislative actions that will help improve Hawaii’s readiness for future climate events.

Click here to read the full interview in the November 11 Honolulu Civil Beat