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'We Lost Everything': Hawaii Swamped by Worst Flooding in 20 Years
Experts agree that the climate emergency caused by the burning of fossil fuels is making extreme rainfall events on the islands wetter and more common, reigniting the debate about who should foot the bill.
Mar 25, 2026
Hawaii was inundated by its worst flooding in 20 years over the weekend, in another reminder of how the climate crisis disrupts the lives of ordinary people by increasing the likelihood and frequency of extreme weather events.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green on Tuesday formally requested federal aid for a series of storms this month that he said could cost the state more than $1 billion in debris clearing and repairs to homes, roads, and infrastructure.
“These storms have impacted every county in our state and stretched our emergency response capabilities,” Green said in a statement.
Hawaii's waterlogged woes began on March 10 with the first in a series of winter Pacific rainstorms known as Kona lows. The initial storm caused upwards of $400 million in damages, including to Maui's Kula Hospital, and left the ground saturated when another storm rolled in beginning March 19, leading to what Green told Hawaii News Now was “the largest flood that we’ve had in Hawaii in 20 years."
“Should the residents just consider it an act of God and open up their checkbooks whenever this happens when the record is clear about who knew what and when they knew it?”
This second storm inundated Oahu's North Shore on Friday night, necessitating more than 230 rescues and placing 5,500 people under an evacuation order at one point, according to The Associated Press. The storm damaged hundreds of homes as well as schools, airports, and highways. All told, the two storms dumped a total of four feet of rain on parts of Oahu and Maui, Green said, as CBS reported.
"We lost everything," Oahu resident Melanie Lee told CBS News after visiting her flood-damaged home on Monday. "My children's pictures. Just real sentimental stuff. Now it's like, now where we go from here?"
The agricultural sector was also hard hit, with farmers on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and the Big Island reporting over $10.5 million in damages, according to Honolulu Civil Beat.
Yet Friday's storm was not the end. On Monday, another downpour brought flash flooding to southern Oahu, as rain fell at a rate for 2-4 inches per hour, shocking even meteorologists.
“When you think it’s over, it’s not quite over,” National Weather Service forecaster Cole Evans told AP on Tuesday.
Oahu Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Molly Pierce told AP: “Most of us have not seen something that just keeps going like this... We feel like we keep getting punched down. But we’ll keep getting back up.”
Experts agree that the climate emergency is making extreme rainfall events on the islands wetter and more common.
As Honolulu Today reported:
The intense flooding in Hawaii highlights the growing threat of extreme weather events driven by climate change. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall have increased in the islands, leading to devastating impacts on infrastructure, homes, and communities.
Retired University of Hawaii professor Tom Giambelluca, who now supervises weather monitoring towers, told Honolulu Civil Beat that scientists have observed Hawaii's weather getting dryer generally, while storms tend to drop more rain that causes more flooding.
“It’s not like we never had extremes before. You know, something like this could have happened with no warming, probably,” Giambelluca said. “But these kinds of events seem to be getting more frequent.”
US Rep. Jill Takuda (D-Hawaii) told Maui Now: “We are accustomed to saying, ‘Well, this was a 100-year flood,’ right?... Well, 100-plus-year floods are happening every few years. We literally have to throw away the book in terms of the way we used to look at weather patterns in Hawaii.”
The flooding is also an example of how the impacts of climate disasters can build on each other. Some of the rains fell on Lahaina in Maui, where soil is less absorbent due to scarring from 2023's deadly climate-fueled wildfires.
“We think about evacuation routes when it comes to a fire,” Maui resident Kaliko Storer told Maui Now. “And now we say, when are we going to really sit down and talk about these (flood) controls?”
The connection between the burning of fossil fuels and the uptick in extreme weather events is reigniting the debate about who should pay for the damages from storms like those that swamped Hawaii this month.
State lawmakers are working to pass legislation that would allow insurers to recoup some storm costs from oil and gas companies directly, as Honolulu Civil Beat reported Tuesday.
"This is the third generational rain event we’ve had in the last four weeks,” state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole (D-24) said. Referring to reporting that large fossil fuels companies have known for decades about the climate-heating impacts of their products and chose to lie to the public instead of act, he added, “Should the residents just consider it an act of God and open up their checkbooks whenever this happens when the record is clear about who knew what and when they knew it?”
Hawaii is also one of several states that has sued Big Oil for climate damages.
Even as oil prices climb due to the US and Israeli war on Iran, Emily Atkin of Heated argued that disasters like Hawaii's prove that the cost is still deflated.
"This is what the true price of oil looks like: Hawaiians wading through their flooded homes while the state scrambles to find a billion dollars for cleanup," she wrote.
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‘Just as Big Oil Predicted’: Fossil Fuel Industry Under Fire as Record Heat Broils Western States
"Extreme heatwaves like the one impacting the Western US this month are one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their conduct would bring about," said Public Citizen.
Mar 19, 2026
Spring has not yet even begun, but as science journalist Rebecca Boyle wrote Thursday for The Atlantic, "it feels like we skipped right to summer" across the Western United States, which is facing record temperatures this week.
As of Monday, 39 million people across California, Nevada, and Arizona were under heat alerts. Temperatures in Los Angeles are reaching "25-35 degrees above normal," records are being "rewritten" in Las Vegas, and Phoenix is facing temperatures of 105°F two months earlier than usual, according to warnings issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) this week.
"This is not normal. Or at least it wasn’t normal in the past," said Boyle, who explained that it was the result of hot air being trapped by "a bizarrely strong ridge of high pressure in Earth’s atmosphere," the kind that would be uncommonly strong even in the summer.
Citing a model created by the nonprofit group Climate Central, she said that human-caused climate change had made these extreme temperatures five times more likely.
The NWS warned that a heatwave in March is "very dangerous, particularly for those not acclimated to the heat and/or traveling from cooler climates.”
Counts by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1,600-2,400 Americans die each year from heat-related causes, and they've more than doubled since 1999.
Meanwhile, a report from the Federation of American Scientists last year found that "the combined effects of extreme heat cost [the US] over $162 billion in 2024—equivalent to nearly 1% of the US GDP."
The Western United States has recently experienced its warmest winter on in recorded history, leading to a record snow drought. Scientists say this has depleted water supplies and will make the region more vulnerable to wildfires and drought later this year.
Climate scientist Daniel Swain told ABC News 10 of Northern California that this is only the beginning of how the climate crisis will impact the state in the coming decades.
"The hottest hots are already getting hotter, and they will continue to get hotter. We haven't seen the hottest temperatures that we're going to see in the next 20 or 30 years," Swain said. "We'll see an increasing number of years with severe wildfire conditions... We will also see increased risk of major flood events, either as snowmelt becomes more rapid in the spring or as winter storms drop even more rainfall more quickly."
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said heatwaves like this one are unfolding "just as Big Oil predicted."
"A relatively small number of major fossil fuel companies are responsible for the majority of all greenhouse gas emissions generated by humanity. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all global greenhouse gas emissions generated since 1854, and just 57 companies are responsible for 80% of the emissions generated since 2016," explained a report published by the group Thursday.
"These companies didn’t just contribute to this heatwave—they did so knowingly," the report said. "For decades, Big Oil companies were internally forecasting exactly these kinds of climate disasters."
However, the report explains, the industry "developed and orchestrated a multidecade, coordinated campaign to defraud the public about the dangers of climate change, and blocked solutions that could have prevented these disasters."
A study published earlier this month by Geophysical Research Letters showed that as more carbon has been pumped into the atmosphere over the past 10 years, the rate at which the climate is warming has doubled.
Following this trend, it may be as soon as 2030 that the globe surpasses 1.5°C above preindustrial averages, at which point many climate risks, such as heatwaves, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, are expected to be dramatically amplified, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"Big Oil companies have, indeed, cost this country and the world," Public Citizen said. "Extreme heatwaves like the one impacting the Western US this month are one of the catastrophic disasters these companies predicted their conduct would bring about. They should be made to pay."
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Trump and Israel’s War on Iran Once Again Exposes the Folly of Fossil Fuel Dependence
The world’s leaders should not only condemn US and Israeli aggression that has thrown the global economy into a tailspin but also take action to insulate their economies from this relentless cycle of fossil-fueled violence, volatility, and instability
Mar 19, 2026
As the US and Israeli war on Iran continues into its third week, the human, economic, and ecological impacts are devastating. Some 3,000 Iranians have been killed, including 165 children in one school strike, 10,000 injured, and 3.2 million displaced.
The war has caused a crisis. The World Health Organization has warned that with many oil storage tanks hit, resulting in “black rain” falling on Tehran, there is "danger for the population." The debris contains toxins that can cause respiratory and neurological damage, as well as certain kinds of cancer. For US consumers, who were promised that President Donald Trump would stop foreign conflict, the war is costing more than $890 million a day in direct costs, before we factor in the rising costs of energy. This is money that could be spent on education and healthcare.
The war has also brought chaos to global oil markets. Middle East producers have cut oil production by at least 10 million barrels per day, sending oil prices soaring. With no end to the conflict in sight, oil markets remain jittery and volatile.
Spikes in the price of oil affect billions of working people worldwide. They are forced to pay more to fill up their tanks, heat their homes, and even purchase food, since fertilizer is often made from fossil fuels. Rising energy prices can also cause knock-on inflation in the price of other consumer goods.
It is nonsensical that the global economy is so dependent on a 21-mile strait of water staying open to tanker traffic.
On Tuesday, the price of a barrel of Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was close to $104, up almost 50% from before the conflict started. By Thursday, after strikes on Gulf oil and gas infrastructure, oil was $119 a barrel and gas jumped 30%, with industry insiders calling it an “Armageddon scenario.” “The world does not need $120 oil,” said Steven Pruett, chief executive of one Texas-based oil producer, Elevation Resources. “It’s going to cause economic destruction.”
Last week, the global energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, said that oil markets are suffering “the largest supply disruption in history.” The boss of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for the world economy if the US-Iran war drags on.
The problem lies with the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. A quarter of the world’s oil—some 20 million barrels a day—passes through the Strait, which is only 21 miles wide at one point. And now, in retaliation for the US and Israeli aggression, Iran has effectively stopped traffic through the Strait by bombing tankers.
For decades, academics and the oil industry have warned that war in Iran could cut off the Strait in times of conflict. The industry has long feared what would happen if the Strait were to close. Chevron boss Mike Wirth recently said: “We do crisis management exercises… the big one has always been something in the Middle East that shuts the Strait of Hormuz… Markets are very uncomfortable, uncertain, volatile, and unpredictable.”
It has become increasingly apparent that Trump had no plan for dealing with the Strait’s closure after pleading earlier this week with European allies to help keep it open. In a scathing editorial, the New York Times wrote: “President Trump went to war against Iran without explaining his strategy to the American people or the world. It now appears that he may not have had much of a strategy at all.”
It added that he also “failed to plan for a predictable side effect of a war in the Middle East: a disruption of oil supplies that causes a price spike and impairs the global economy.”
The evidence bears this out. The threat of closing the Strait remained unseen by the Trump administration, bloodthirsty for regime change and blinkered by the ease of removing President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.
Before the strikes on Iran, Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright had told an interviewer he was not concerned that the looming war might disrupt oil supplies in the Middle East and wreak havoc in the markets. Since the crisis began, Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have appeared “flummoxed” by the surge in prices, according to Politico. One industry official has called Burgum the “Where’s Waldo” of the crisis. Both men have been scrambling, but failing, “to head off a bout of energy-driven inflation.”
After a closed-door briefing to lawmakers last week, one Democratic Senator, Chris Murphy, said on social media that the administration had no plan for the Strait of Hormuz and did “not know how to get it safely back open.”
It's not all bad news for the oil industry, though.
Oil companies are set to make obscene profits. Oil Change researchers recently calculated that if oil prices rise just $20 a barrel, US producers will rake in $280 million in extra revenue every day. That’s over $100 billion a year. Shares in the six oil majors, BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies, have soared by more than $130 billion in the first two weeks of the war.
This isn’t the first time global oil markets have been thrown into upheaval by war, and by looking to the past, we can see the dangers and possibilities created by oil shocks. In 2022, oil companies were able to use the invasion of Ukraine to increase their already massive profits.
For long-term economic security and stability, as well as a future safe from climate disasters, there needs to be a radical shift to renewables.
The five Big Oil companies—BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies—reported combined profits of $196.3 billion the following year, more than the economic output of most countries. Working people around the world, as well as our climate, paid the price for Big Oil’s greed. For example, the war cost Canadians $200 billion over the next three years due to inflation spikes.
After the Ukraine war, Pakistan prioritized renewables. Energy analysts in the country believe that solar expansion has helped insulate the power sector from the spiraling energy costs.
“While we’re certainly seeing some impacts, the expansion of distributed solar in the country has provided a cushioning effect against the impacts [of the energy crisis]” Nabiya Imran, an associate at Renewables First, a Pakistani think tank, told The Guardian.
The world’s reaction to the 1973 oil crisis shows that a different path is possible. After oil prices quadrupled, there was significant investment in renewables and energy efficiency. Back then, the US government worked on a program to promote wind turbines and energy efficiency, which would be antithetical to the Trump administration.
Indeed, the madness of Trump’s current war on renewables is such that the administration is reportedly planning to pay nearly $1 billion to French energy company TotalEnergies to stop further offshore wind development.
Despite this, the chaos in the energy markets has led to renewed calls to get off oil and decarbonize. In the UK, The Guardian editorial board argued: “After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe swapped Russian pipeline gas for American LNG [liquefied natural gas]. Dependency didn’t disappear. Britain just changed suppliers. That is one reason among many why this crisis must see the government focus like a laser on faster decarbonisation, not more drilling.”
US tech corporation Microsoft, which donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, has also said the war strengthens the case for investment in clean energy sources and battery storage. “Wind and solar as, as part of that mix, is a huge benefit from the standpoint of price stability, because once you install it, you have more certainty around what that actual cost profile looks like,” the company told the Financial Times.
It is nonsensical that the global economy is so dependent on a 21-mile strait of water staying open to tanker traffic. It is nonsensical that oil prices are so volatile that they whipsaw on a tweet from Trump or even a misleading one from US Energy Secretary Chris Wright claiming the US military had successfully shepherded a tanker through the Strait. And it is deeply unjust that this volatility affects the household bills for billions of people.
As some pundits have pointed out, even if Trump declares victory, it is now up to Iran when they will allow the Strait to reopen. It can close it at any time in the future. Iran has the means to hold much of the global economy to ransom.
So, for long-term economic security and stability, as well as a future safe from climate disasters, there needs to be a radical shift to renewables. Leading pundits agree:
There is evidence that the war in Iran is beginning to cause the same shift in thinking that the 1973 oil crisis did. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said this week that it was time to prepare major measures to conserve energy as the situation deteriorates. These include promoting energy conservation and “rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”
It's also worth remembering that the US military is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases of any institution on Earth and the US is the largest producer of oil and gas globally. The military uses much of that might to defend US interests in fossil fuels.
The world’s leaders should not only condemn US and Israeli aggression that has once again thrown the global economy into a tailspin but also take action to insulate their economies from this relentless cycle of fossil-fueled violence, volatility, and instability. Moving away from fossil fuels does not guarantee world peace. We are already seeing conflicts over the rare earth minerals needed for solar and other green technologies in places like the Congo.
But it can insulate working people from the shocks triggered by the reckless aggression of powerful nations that consider themselves adequately protected from the consequences of their actions.
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