Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 31, Number 6, 1 June 2014 — Geothermal and Hawaiʻi Island's energy needs [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Geothermal and Hawaiʻi Island's energy needs

Trustee 's note: Iwant to mahalo Davianna McGregor and Ri.chard Hafor contributing to this month 's eolumn 011 geothermal. Professor McGregor offers the anti viewpoint and Mi: Ha the pro viewpoint.

ANTI: From 1994 to 1996 1 was part of a team of consultants who produced a 365-page study called Native Hcrwaiian Ethnographic Study for the Hawai'i Geothermal Project Proposedfor Puna anel Southwest Maui. The following statements by Dr. Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele in the report are critical in understanding the cultural impacts of developing geothermal energy for Pele practitioners. p. 189: "Traditional chants

reveal the tenet that whatever area of land whieh is hot or whieh still has the steam coming out of it is sacred to the deity. In the chant described above, "Hulihia Ke Au, Ka Papa Honua O Kona Oku" this tenet is referred to as "Kua ā Kanawai," the "law of the burning back." However, it is not only her back whieh is sacred, it is the whole part of the land that is hot whieh is sacred. The chant, "E komo maloko o Halema'uma'u," more clearly defines this when the chanter, in the first person persona of the deity, declares that whatever is hot is sacred to her. In the chant, the first person voice representing the deity invites the listener to go into Halema'uma'u and see her display and her movements. The listener is invited to view her inner parts and how she dances and moves. However, the listener is admonished not to take what belongs to the deity and that whatever is hot belongs to the deity, that whatever is hot is sacred." p. 205: "This energy of geothermal belongs to a deity. It belongs to a deity that has lived for hundreds of years and has been the only deity that has eome down to us for many generations. It is still very mueh alive, still very mueh visible, still very mueh worshipped and thought of and believes at all different levels and respected." — Davianna Pōmaika 'i McGregor, University of Hawai'i-Mānoa ethnic studies professor

PR0: We encourage our young people to get more education, but they cannot find jobs; ean we blame them for thinking something is wrong with the system? More and more Hawaiians are leaving their ancestral lands to find jobs that support their families. Kūpuna have fewer children here to help them. We look around and see more homeless people. Our gasoline and electricity bills increase constantly. What's

going on? The world is using twice as mueh oil as it's finding, and the price of oil has quadmpled in 10 years. Prices will keep going up. We are exporting more and more of our economy. Do we have a truly sustainable energy solution? An energy source that gives us an advantage over the rest of the world? It is not enough to be first, and then let the world catch up. We need an energy solution that gives us an advantage; this ean help us reverse all the negatives. We ean use the sun, but everyone has sun. We ean use the wind, but many have wind. We have technology, but everybody has computers. What we have, and need to use as well as the sun and wind and other technologies, is geothermal. We need a source of energy that is socially sustainable, environmentally sustainable and economically sustainable. Geothermal is what we have that ean be all these things. I've been to five Peak Oil conferences, and to Iceland and the Philippines, looking into geothermal energy. Everybody needs base power electricity, but very few places have geothermal. It ean benefit our host eulture, and it ean help everyone else, too. It's a gift. — Richard Ha, Geothermal Working Group co-chair I

Rūbert K. Lindsey, Jr.

Trustee, Hawai'i