Ulalena Haliburton and other thoughts on Maui

As our vacation ends, and we look "forward" to returning to Redding, and its 110 degree heat, the following musings are made.

Ulalena in Maui is a wonderful show, that tells a musical and cultural history of the Naive Peoples of Maui.  It begins with much spiritualism, ends the same, with a sharp comment in the end of what the white man has done to the island and to the Native Americans.

Like the mainland, the Native Americans (and they are all Americans since 1959) were virtually wiped out.  There was little bounty hunting like in the mainland, sickness did the work of reducing the native population.

Be that as it may, measles and smallpox left the natives unable to protect themselves, and the island was confiscated from a greatly weakened Hawaiian monarch by the United States in 1898.

Today, the climate plus magnificent views make Maui a island paradise, for everyone but the native peoples.  They mostly are resigned to lives of poverty, holding on to small parcels of land, with little compensation for their island's riches.  The only time you see poverty in Maui is when you drive by a native's shanty town.

And the weather is changing here too.  The humidity has increased markedly, as with the heat.

It is summer, and we know to expect sticky days, but the citizens here are remarking that it is hotter, the ocean is hotter.

As with Redding, the heat and the summer are more difficult to stand, but certainly better here in Maui.

And then there is Haliburton.  In the last few days, they have admitted they covered up evidence of their complicity in the Mexican Gulf Spill of a few years back, that was an environmental disaster.  These were criminal charges they plead guilty to, with I hope massive fines and even jail time.    

The worst thing, is by covering up what they knew, they could have forestalled efforts to stop the leaking  of oil, that turned yet another beautiful place into a disaster.

So, the oil industry once again thumbs it nose at the environment, does what it wants, and pays a small fine for its criminal behavior.

How are these linked to Maui?

The heat links them.

As we continue our fanatical addiction to oil, we repeat the same tragedy that killed so many Maui natives.  The free market honors profit over everything else.

Whaling and sugar cane were the first economic booms to hit Maui.  They almost killed all the whales, and the sugar can bleached the soil for generations; and the influx of immigrant workers carried the disease that killed almost all of the Hawaiians.

The whale population still has not recovered from the whaling abomination of the 1870s.   The only thing that stopped the slaughter of one of the world's treasures, was the whales could no longer be found, and mankind discovered petroleum; both a curse to manking.

Greed, and the homage to unbridled capitalism did its work once again, reducing a natural resource to nothing in a few decades.  

And now, mother nature is exacting her revenge on all of us.  Maui is changing, Redding is changing, its getting hotter.

And just like the whalers, we are running out of oil.

But,  we all keep getting in our cars and R.V.s, rev up the engine, and go for a ride, pouring yet more CO2 into the air, burning up a finite resource because we won't change.

Halitburton was led by Dick Cheney, who gave us unregulated fracking, that is killing the environment as we speak.  Haliburton represents the same lunacy of the whaling industry and the sugar cane industry; destroy the environment for a quick profit.

Ulalena teaches that the earth mother does not forget.  There is an ultimate revenge that will be exacted from all of us....Mother earth does not forget!