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The most devastating wildfires in recent history, in Lahaina and Los Angeles, were influenced heavily by climate change, which has caused a shift in weather patterns, making wildfires more frequent and intense, and exacerbated by extractive capitalism. This blog discusses the true causes and politicization of these disasters. . . .
Once Hawaiʻi’s political and cultural capital, the town of Lahaina was once overflowing with water, with so many canals and wetlands that it was even called the “Venice of the Pacific.” Prior to plantation agriculture, Lahaina had an abundance of ʻulu (breadfruit) and loko iʻa (fish pond aquaculture). The fires were sparked by extreme wind conditions and severe drought driven by climate change, and exacerbated by centuries of water diversion by plantations and now hotels, golf courses, and luxury homes. In Hawaiʻi and other places, such fires are a legacy of colonial changes to land and water use that replaced traditional land tenure and stewardship with a plantation-based, extractive economy. The conditions in August 2023 left Lahaina a “tinderbox”, and a series of wildfires broke out in Lahaina, Kula, and Kīhei on August 8, 2023. The devastating fire claimed 102 lives, destroyed 2,200 homes, and left 12,000 people without housing, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in over a century. One year after the fires, unemployment and poverty are up and incomes are down among survivors, according to a report by the University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization. The Lahaina fires both highlighted and accelerated long-running conflicts in Lahaina over land, water, and development, throwing historic land loss and ongoing displacement into sharp focus.
A similar pattern unfolded in Los Angeles in 2024, where extreme heat, prolonged dry spells, and the encroachment of invasive grass species created the perfect conditions for the fires to spread uncontrollably. As of this writing, the Los Angeles fires have taken at least 27 lives, destroyed over 12,000 structures, and have left over 90,000 people stranded under evacuation orders. The fires are estimated to have caused up to $275 billion in damages, making this the most expensive wildfire in modern American history, and one of the costliest natural disasters overall.
Climate Change as the Fuel & Capitalism Fanning the Flames
The key role of climate change in these disasters is indisputable. In places like Lahaina, where drought conditions were already severe, the additional pressure from climate change has made it increasingly difficult to manage fire risk. In the Palisades and Eaton fires, the same troubling trend has surfaced, with California’s increasing vulnerability to both extreme heatwaves and droughts, all amplified by the state’s ongoing struggle to manage water resources. In Lahaina and now Los Angeles (and even the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California that killed 85 people), the blazes grew to monster fires because powerful winds met a parched, overgrown landscape. In all three cases, sudden drought had sucked the moisture out of local vegetation, creating abundant kindling for fire to feed on, with strong winds carrying the embers into residential areas.
Though the climate crisis fueled these fires, extractive capitalism played an undeniable role in exacerbating the conditions that allowed them to reach catastrophic proportions. The relentless drive for profit has led to irresponsible land management practices, overdevelopment, and inadequate fire prevention measures—issues that were starkly visible in both Lahaina and the Palisades.
In Lahaina, for instance, aggressive real estate development and the focus on tourism dollars led to an increased demand for housing and infrastructure at the expense of local communities. As developers cleared land for luxury resorts and second vacation homes, they contributed to the loss of Native vegetation that had once helped to stabilize the local ecosystem, and the unsustainable use of water in turn creating a landscape more susceptible to wildfire. Real estate speculation in the wake of the fire has driven up land prices, with investors looking to acquire land at a lower price and profit off the rebuilding process, while many locals struggle to return to their homes.
In the Palisades, the real estate boom has similarly contributed to increased fire risks. Areas that were once wild or semi-rural have been developed into luxury housing for wealthy residents, pushing further into fire-prone regions and making it more difficult for local governments to manage these high-risk areas effectively. In the early 2000s, the privatization of firefighting services and water resources in California led to significant cuts in public services. Firefighting services now operate based on profit-loss calculations rather than public welfare. As New York Times best seller Naomi Klein highlights in The Shock Doctrine, disasters are often exploited to dismantle public services and replace them with privatized profit-driven alternatives. She called this pattern of radical privatization driven by corporate interests in the wake of cataclysmic events “disaster capitalism.” The rise of private firefighting services illustrates how these systems prioritize the wealthy over the common good, exacerbating the destructive potential of wildfires.
Politicizing & Profiting from Disaster
Rather than acknowledge the true causes of these crises, profiteers have manufactured anti-conservation and anti-Indigenous narratives to attack stewardship efforts. In the immediate aftermath of the Lahaina disaster, government decision-makers were quick to blame “DEI hires” and responsible water conservation and the restoration of streams for kalo farming for the lack of water to fight the fires. Similarly, in California, conservative news outlets cast blame on dam removals located hundreds of miles north of the fire zone, part of a long-planned restoration of the Klamath River ecosystem supported by tribal nations, environmental groups, as well as state and federal officials. President Trump echoed this inaccurate and baseless claim, blaming California Governor Newsom for blocking a measure that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California to Southern California.
In both locations, Indigenous communities saw the warning signs and knew that the catastrophes could have been prevented through responsible water stewardship efforts and the regrowth of Native species, and in the case of California, with cultural burning, a traditional fire management practice used for centuries in the U.S., Canada, and around the world. California banned the practice in 1850, according to the University of California. That changed in 2022 with new legislation, but cultural burns are still heavily regulated.
This disconnect highlights the importance of acknowledging and encouraging Indigenous practices in disaster mitigation. Indigenous poet and community organizer, and 2024 Piʻo Summit keynote speaker, Lyla June recently called for empowering local Indigenous communities to conduct traditional cultural burns to protect southern California’s forests [see Piʻo Summit keynote speech; Instagram post on LA Fires].
Conclusion
Both the 2023 Lahaina and 2024 Los Angeles fires starkly highlight the intersection of climate change, poor land management, and destructive economic policy. While climate change is the undeniable driver of increasingly severe wildfires, the capitalist systems that prioritize profit over sustainability have worsened these disasters while politicians have inaccurately blamed these disasters on Indigenous stewardship practices. In short, the wildfires became not just a crisis of environmental destruction but a flashpoint for debates over governance, economic development, land and water rights, and the climate crisis — all of which were deeply politicized by both local and national actors.
As communities rebuild, it will be essential to address the broader systemic issues at play and ground recovery in cultural values, equity, and sustainability. By integrating traditional ecological knowledge with modern practices, we can foster a more resilient future, mitigate the impacts of climate change, and honor the deep connection that Indigenous peoples have with the earth. Indeed, many also see this as a time for hulihia, an opportunity to “return to the natural cycle that has been deeply disturbed” and “build new expectations for the future.” (For more on community perspectives on Lahaina recovery efforts, watch the Piʻo Summit plenary panel here)
Sources:
Native News Online Staff. Fox News Host Faults ‘The Native Americans’ for California Fires, Native News Online (Jan. 12, 2025).
Dreaver, Santana. Indigenous communities in B.C. and California promote cultural burns for disaster mitigation, CBC News (Jan. 22, 2025).
Fawcett, Denby. Show Respect for Lahaina by Restoring Its Once Lush Wetlands, Honolulu Civil Beat (Aug. 22, 2023).
Klein Naomi & D. Kapuaʻala Sproat, Why Was There No Water to Fight the Fire in Maui?, The Guardian (Aug. 17, 2023).
McFall-Johnson, Morgan. The most horrific wildfires in recent US history have one key feature in common, Business Insider (Jan. 10, 2025).
Palomera, Gieselle. Opinion: Indigenous communities should lead the way in fire prevention strategies, CALO News (Jan. 20, 2025).
Wang, Claire. How 19th-Century Pineapple Plantations Turned Maui Into a Tinderbox, The Guardian (Aug. 27, 2023).
Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan Books (2008).
