Hello All,
Just wanted to apologize, I meant to publish this on Wednesday but I put in the wrong date. So without further ado here is my super awesome APEC essay.

Hawaii is one of the most isolated land masses in the world. In the middle of the Pacific ocean, it serves as a nexus to the United States and Asia. With Oahu alone having over one million residents, sustainability is key. Energy, food, and resources are all shipped across the ocean on huge freight liners bringing in fossil fuels and the stuff our island runs on. Within Hawaii it important to conserve what we have due to our geography and isolation. To find the answers to Hawaii’s energy crisis one has to look no further than Hawaii’s past. In the 1700’s Hawaii’s population was the same as it is now, approximately 1 million people. However the people of yesterday never knew of huge metal container ships or gas guzzling cars. In the 1700’s all food was grown on the island, yet now with the same population, why is 85% of our food shipped in?

The answers lie largely within Hawaii’s infrastructure. In the 20th century many of us moved from farming to desk jobs. The times in which Hawaii was an ideal farming location for crops such as sugar had washed away and was replaced by the tourism industry in the mid 20th century. Since then, Hawaii has changed it’s fields of bountiful harvest and replaced it single family homes and travel destinations.

With no farms, Hawaii’s only choice is to import from the contiguous United States. This may not seem like a problem but with 9,000 heat records broken in the United States this year alone, farming is becoming increasingly difficult. The environmental factor combined with the astonishing cost of fuel and what meager crops farmers actually managed to produce make food very expensive and even more so when it’s shipped off to our island chain. It’s so expensive that many of Hawaii’s native residents have moved to the mainland.

Food is only part of the sustainability puzzle. Despite Hawaii’s small size, we have the second worst congestion in the United States and the largest dependence of foreign oil in the United States. Hawaii has tried without much success in recent years to break it’s dependence of foreign fuels. But it wasn’t until 2008 that the Clean Energy Initiative was signed into law. The innovation calls for a 70% clean energy economy which is using renewable resources for power within a generation, around 2030. Supply is not a problem in terms of alternative energy, but the jump from fossil fuels to other energy sources is a stretch. Automobiles, industries, and Hawaii’s very infrastructure would need to be changed in order to meet these guidelines and hence would cost millions to implement.

The transition may have started slowly but progress is being made. The first EV station has opened in the state capital and wind farms have sprouted along the scenic hills of Oahu’s North Shore. Not only is the government pressing toward change, but non profit organizations are as well. Blue Planet Foundation is one of them. They’re committed to ending the use of fossil fuels on Earth, starting with Hawaii and they have stuck by that goal, winning the hearts of the community and the wallets of the private sector. With all participants striving for greener and cheaper energy. They’ve started small with swapping light bulbs and have grown to helping businesses explore their green side.

Changing the very heart of Hawaii’s community and infrastructure will take time, it will undoubtably affect all of us, bringing in cheaper food and more efficient commerce. Perhaps make living affordable to native Hawaiians. As an American, it’s easy to expect the light with the flick of a switch or food with a quick run to the grocery store. However we forget all of our resources come from somewhere and there isn’t an infinite amount. Until then $4 bucks a gallon.