 Hello, and welcome to the Ruderman Roundtable. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman from the District of Puna and Ka'u on the Big Island. I'm your host here on Think Tech's program, Ruderman Roundtable, where we focus on environmental and good government issues. Today I'm joined by Marty Townsend, director of the Sierra Club for Hawaii. Thank you for joining me, Marty. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Very nice to see you outside the halls of the legislature. So the Sierra Club encompasses a wide range of policy issues facing Hawaii. What are the biggest challenges facing Sierra Club and its efforts in Hawaii? So I think, you know, at the core of everything that we do is battling climate change. So, you know, that encompasses a wide range of things, like you said, from invasive species controls, shoreline erosion. But the thing that's really sort of percolated to the top is our water issues. And so everything from ensuring water quality, but also water quantity, so restoration of streams, ensuring, you know, the natural connections between the ocean and freshwater streams, as well as, you know, making sure that our water resources aren't contaminated. And that's a significant undertaking. But also dovetailing with that is clean energy. We know that we have to address the causes of climate change, and that is our fossil fuel-based economy. And so Hawaii is, you know, taking the leadership role in converting, making a just transition to a fossil-free fuel, a fossil-fuel-free future. But and that's a huge undertaking. I mean, we have a commitment to 100% renewable by 2045, but there's still a lot to get us actually there. You know, the next set of benchmarks. And yeah, so it's a huge undertaking. And for the most part, I'm the paid staff for the Sierra Club, but we're really a volunteer-led organization, and it's a huge group of volunteers who work to help make all that happen. Now when you say you're the paid staff, does that mean you're the entire paid staff? Well, for a long time, the Sierra Club had only one staff person, and we were just blessed with a major donation, and so we will be scaling up. So we have a few new staff people coming on. And how many volunteers or how many people are actively involved with this? That's a hard question to answer, because there's so many different facets of it. So in terms of like our political work, the things that we do at the Capitol to make change happen there are about 60 people who are regularly like engaged in specific issues, and then separate from that is a whole other community of people who are working on outdoor education programs. They host hikes and, you know, cleanups and trail restorations and work days at farms almost every weekend on all the major islands. Nice. Yeah. Well, speaking legislatively first, what are the most pressing concerns for the Sierra Club? And what's the first thing you would do to move the Legislature to solve it? Well, so we've been working on clean energy, we've been working on water issues, working on invasive species controls, funding for Department of Natural Resources. But all of these battles, the thing that they kind of, that they have in common, is the makeup of our Capitol. If we had a legislative body that recognized the importance of being a long-term investment in environmental protection, Sierra Club's job would be much easier. So really a lot of the things that we work on would greatly benefit from improvements to our electoral process. How we get people elected has a significant impact on what policies we're allowed to get passed. So. What do you mean? Tell me more about that. How does, how do we get people elected to relate to the environment? Well, so the reality that we are all confronted with is that private corporations have an outsized influence in our democracy. You know, there was a study in 2014 from Princeton University and Northwestern University where they found that 90 percent of average Americans have zero influence on elected politics, on the decisions that their representatives make. And that really the entities that have the most influence are those who donate. I think that that study found something like two-thirds of the political donations came from a point two percent of the American population. Like that just blows my mind. And it's all about this, you know, reciprocal economic relationship, right? So the politicians, they have to raise an absurd amount of money in order to win an election. So the companies will give them that money and then in turn the companies come around, have to meet those victors and ask for tax subsidies, for example. I think that same study found that over the past five years the 200 most politically active companies, meaning they contributed to campaigns and they contributed to political causes, they spent about almost $6 billion total over five years. But in return they got more than $4 trillion in tax subsidies in the U.S. So that gives an idea of like the economy that we're working in terms of our own politics and so I feel like campaign finance, which is a huge honor, but it's an important issue. We need to have, you know, a fair playing field so that people who have equal rights have an equal voice. So it's things, you know, it's all kinds of electoral, political changes, things that you've worked on yourself that we need to get changed, but we're not going to get changed until we get, you know, because it's not in the interest of incumbents, right? So that's probably the reason why voter turnout is so important, but at the same time why voter turnout is so low because- You just had a world record low voter turnout. World record low, like, oh my God, it was like, it was 30%, just over 30%. That's crazy. It's in a state that is the lowest in the nation of voter turnout, so it's an all-time low I think we saw. And I think you pointed to at least one of the reasons why is because a lot of people feel they have no influence on their government because of the outsized influence of corporate money. Right. And it's been part of a downward turn since the 50s, a consistent downward turn. And I mean, there are a lot of like ancillary issues that can point to why it was a low voter turnout. For one thing, we had many more people registered to vote this past primary election than the previous primary election, something like 40,000 people registered. That together with having a less number of people actually voting made that drop even more significant. And you know, there's people highlighted that, you know, we didn't have like a major like statewide ticket happening, like no governor's race, no contentious of congressional race. And so people weren't that very interested, but I think those are, you know, sort of all ancillary. It really comes down to do people feel like it makes a difference that they vote. And there were a lot of people who got engaged while Senator Sanders was running for president. And the fact that he was, that was no longer part of the conversation. I think people just sort of tuned back out. And that's really unfortunate. I think that's something that we who are concerned about improving politics in Hawaii need to figure out how to address. We need to keep people engaged. We need to make it easier to vote. I feel like people should just be automatically registered to vote. You know, Oregon passed the law. People are automatically registered to vote once they go to the driver's license. We knew there's several ways you could do it. People who pay taxes. Once you pay taxes, you're registered to vote. Make it so super easy. You don't have no registration, nothing. And then you just focus on, you know, people who are doing like identity theft kinds of things to prevent voter fraud. And there's none of this like you have this form or that form where you turned it in by this time or that time. You make it in rights, an inherent right, and you make it a holiday. Every election day should be a holiday. And it should be a big deal that we need to go and vote. Yeah. So, and I think we do those kinds of things. And we can start to then pass laws that actually address some of the fundamental problems in our voting system. You know, this idea that we must choose a lesser of two evils. Why not have a voting system where votes are ranked? Right? You have instant runoffs. And so if my top choice doesn't win, that's okay because my votes then get counted towards my second choice. And the second choice has as much, has a better opportunity of winning. Are there places in the country that have what's it called ranked choice? I'm sorry. What's that? Yeah. Well, it's either called rank voting or instant runoff. Instant runoff. Is there places that do that? Yeah. Places that do do that. And it seems to be working. Yeah. I know like major riots and like that because the sky has not fallen, right? And like we could also do stuff like party ballots, you know, like as it is right now, you have to decide which party you're voting for and then you can only vote for candidates that are in that party. Why not separate those two? Vote for the party. And those parties get seats assigned based on the percentage of votes that they collect, right? So if you get 5% of the vote, then you have 5% of the seats in the house in the Senate. And then people can vote for whichever candidates they want. Not necessarily being tied to one party or another. That might be awesome. But that's going to be a big change, right? But we really can't do any of those until we have people turning out to vote. Because incumbents are not going to make these kind of changes to the voting system. It doesn't serve their interests. So when I think about good government and what would make our democracy more responsive, there's sort of two big issues, one of which you touched on, which is campaign finance reform, which might include even publicly funded elections. And then there's all the other good government things like easier voter access, perhaps term limits voter initiative, lobbying reform. So the big one, which we mentioned of campaign finance, I have one friend that says that's the reform that makes all other reforms possible. Right. But of course, as you just mentioned, we're not going to get there because most incumbents see it as contrary to their best interest and won't let it pass. How can we ever make any progress on this issue? It's kind of a catch-22. It is a catch-22. And the thing is, I think people need to overcome this defeatist sense of like, my vote doesn't count and get out there and vote for the candidates that are going to support this. So we had a significant, a notable number of progressives running for the first time against incumbents, and the low voter turnout really hurt them. I mean, some of them really had a really great shot. And if the voter turnout had been better, they may be in office right now. And those are people who would have voted for campaign finance reform. So it's part of our own human psychology, where we have to overcome that inherent sense of like, my vote doesn't count, doesn't make a difference. They're going to do whatever it is they want anyway, whatever's in their interest. We have to play the long game and recognize that the more we engage in the process and the more we put our weight behind those that are going to fight for us, and even if they don't win this time, they will fight again the next time, like, keep it going, right? That's the only way that we're going to be able to build the momentum we need to to make these kind of fundamental changes. And so we just had this incredibly low voter turnout right after this huge wave of new people getting involved with the Sanders campaign. Where do you see us right now? Are those people that just got involved? Are they going to stay involved? Or do we have to somehow reinvigorate them or re-inspire them? Or what's going to happen next? I mean, if only I knew it was going to happen next, I would be... I was kept, man. You didn't know. You know, we're going to have to keep them engaged. We're going to have to find those issues that people are going to feel like, yeah, this makes a difference. It matters that I'm engaged because we're going to need them in 2018. And there's no guarantee that we're going to have the Senator Sanders to help invigorate people. You've got to be self-motivated. I mean, Senator Sanders turned you on, right? He inspired you. You feel like, for once in your life, there was a politician that was speaking to you and you need to harness that inspiration and have it motivate you for the next five years. This is going to be a multi-year struggle to regain our democracy. And if we fail to do it, voter turnout is going to get worse. And the special interest services that the Capitol currently provides are only going to get worse. And so we don't really have a choice but to engage. We have to, or we're giving up. And for me, that's just not an option. Do you think it's going to be possible to do that? Yes, I do. I do. I think actually for the eight people that ran on the progressive ticket went through, they, I think, really inspired young people to get more involved. And I think over the next two years, we're going to see even more engagement. It's going to be tough. We're going to have to find those issues that really speak to a wide range of voters. And like you said, campaign finance reform is the reform that makes all of the reforms possible. And so if we can stay focused on that issue or one like it that speaks to all of us, then I think we have a real shot. The main thing is for us to not get disheartened. Well, you've inspired me just to hear your optimism. And I'm here with Marty Townsend. Marty Townsend, director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii. And we're on the Ruderman Roundtable. We'll be back in just a moment. Thank you. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energyman at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Jay Fiedel. And I'm the host of Research in Manoa Mondays from 12 to 1 on ThinkTechHawaii.com. Take a look at us and learn about geophysics, learn about planetology, learn about the ocean and earth sciences at UH Manoa. You'll really enjoy it. So come around. We'll see you then. Aloha. I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. You're here at the Ruderman Roundtable on Think Tech Hawaii. We're with Marty Townsend, director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii. Thank you once again, Marty, for being with us. Thank you again for having me. I appreciate it. We were just talking about government and good government and things that might make it better. Let me ask you one more question before we leave that subject. If you could achieve one change or improvement that would make our government better, our democracy better, what would it be? Tough question. Tough question. It can be two things. It is not one. Well, focusing locally, which is where I work the most, I hope that the incumbents who are back in office will take note of the amount of enthusiasm and interest that came from these new challengers and will look upon themselves to try to improve the process a little bit. In my experience, I've found that the rules, the internal rules of the House and the Senate are tough. They are slanted towards benefiting the leadership. They don't necessarily serve public interest, transparency, ensuring public engagement. So I would like to see those rules loosened a little bit so they can't be so easily manipulated and used to circumvent what clearly might be the general popular concern. I feel like there's just way too much emphasis on the leadership, right? You have to be in leadership or to make any change happen. And then, in my opinion, undermines the functionality of our democracy. And it turns what should be, it gives political weight to things that have nothing to do with improving public policy. And that's unfortunate. I think that's part of the reason why we have such apathy is because we've allowed that style of politics, transactional politics to happen, to dominate as opposed to legitimate, genuine problem-solving for the public interest. So I have hopes that the House and the Senate leadership will amend some of their internal rules. Well, let me just play devil's advocate for a minute. We talk about the progressive candidates that didn't quite make it. What would make an incumbent who may be faced one of those? What would make them say, oh, I better pay attention instead of thinking, well, you see, they can't unseat me. After all, so I'll just be business as usual is just fine. What would make them, do you think anything happened to make them serve 10 months? Yeah, I think for several of them, it was really close. And the skin of their teeth was a low voter turnout. And if we continue to engage voters and get people to turn out more, then they may not be so lucky next election. And so their choice is to evolve here and listen to the voice of the public or to risk getting voted out in the next election. I mean, I think it's a mistake for us to look at just one election, and that makes all the difference in the world. It's never like that. All of the stuff is long-term cyclical. And for many of us, we're in it for the long haul. A lot of the progressive challengers indicated that they would run again. And so yeah, so I think it's in the self-interest of the incumbents to embrace some change. Good, wonderful. So let's switch a little bit to talk about agriculture in Hawaii. It's another area of focus that affects the environment. And of course, your club is involved. What are some of Hawaii's greatest needs, agriculturally speaking? So I'm not a farmer myself, but in working with farmers, I found that it is a really tough row. Access to water, access to land, access to financing. I mean, a lot of small farmers have a hard time getting them when they need to get started. I feel like those three things, the way it currently is, is set up to benefit large corporations, industrial agriculture, and not set up to benefit small farmers. I think there's a lot that we could do on public policy to help improve access to financing for farmers and ensure fair access to water. I mean, I'm very concerned about the evolution. As we evolve away from sugar, we've been involved since the 1980s. But we haven't been making the long term decisions that we need to to ensure that everyone has fair access to water for things like diversified agriculture. We've kept a lot of the control of water with a few private corporations, the sugar plantations. And that's not necessarily in the benefit of all of us. It's in the benefit of a few. But water in Hawaii is a public trust resource. No one owns the water. And we, as the public, should just ensure that there is fair and easy access to the water so that everyone can benefit. So that's been a fundamental issue for the Sierra Club. We want to see the restoration of streams. And we want to see the diversification of agriculture to really restore Hawaii to a more sustainable economy. You mentioned access to land as well as water. And I hear from some small farmers that that's such an important issue. Because, first of all, not only is it hard for them to get access to land, but if they don't have any long term equity in the land, then their financing becomes one of the challenges, which is the third issue. So those two are very, very related. It's one thing to own land and be able to borrow money against it. But if you're just leasing the land, and if it's just a year to year lease, you're not going to get finance for the equipment and the improvements. That's one issue that the Sierra Club's been working on with the Department of Land Resources is their land division has been focusing on these short term annual permits, which has really made it difficult for small farmers to get the financial investment that they need. And so trying to push DLNR to embrace these long term lease relationships with farmers who have demonstrated a commitment to the land. They've been there since the 70s, whatever. And there's no reason why they should have a long term lease. What are some of the other things that the Sierra Club is working on to support agriculture? So we also do a lot of hands on stuff. So we started this year with what we call lahannas, or work days. We've been doing it once a quarter. Now we're going to start doing it once a month. Basically 20 or so volunteers go to a local farm and help with whatever labor they need. So we've been working at Tarot Farm and helping them to break open more patches and clear the mud and make, prepare the land for the planting of the huli. And then helping them to restore their all the ancient, you know, the diversions from the stream and get it to go back to the stream. It's really rewarding work. And it's something that has a direct benefit on these farmers who then can take their tarot or whatever their product is to market. So this is individual farms, or farmers that need help. And you find a way to prioritize them and say we're going to go help this one. Yes, right. It's kind of like, I don't know if you're familiar with permablits. So it's an organization I love. And they do really good work. And what they do is it's basically it's like a farm raising kind of approach, right? Where they say, okay, we get together and we're going to work on your yard and then we're going to work on my yard and then we're going to work on his yard, right? And we all work together and everybody's yards are now, you know, growing food. And so it's kind of a similar idea where we look for neighborhood farmers and we try to develop a relationship with them. And if they need like manual labor, we are there. We have come with our gloves and our hats and our boots and do what we can. That's great. And I guess that answers my next question. What is your club doing locally to advocate for better? No, this is a little different. How are you advocating for better stewardship of our lands and natural resources? You mentioned the deal in our land lease efforts. So we do a lot of engagement with the Department of Natural Resources. They meet twice a month and their meetings are public and we encourage people to attend. We help people to write testimony and engage in issues that affect public trust resources, natural cultural resources. And it's a huge universe of things from invasive species controls to ag leases and or leases on public land to water decisions. And so, yeah, there's a huge variety of things that we work on with the Department of Natural Resources. And it's important work, but it's also computational and controversial. But I think so far we've seen really good movement. I'm actually very happy with the appointment of Suzanne Case to deal in our, she's been very fair and thorough. Yeah, both the Department of Natural Resources Board as well as the water commission, but both entities have been making some solid decisions lately. Oh, that's great to hear. Wonderful. Let's switch for a moment to energy. We talked about energy in the context of global warming and climate change. And Hawaii has made a commitment to being a world leader in renewable energy. What does the Sierra Club stand on Hawaii's energy future? Well, we're trying our darndest to get Hawaii to really achieve this 100% renewable goal by 2045 or sooner. And I think the thing that we are coming to recognize is that HIKO is the obstacle. Hawaiian electric industries is- I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I'm responsible for my own comments. It's okay, we've had a conversation. They know how we feel. The way in which Hawaiian electric is set up, the way in which we have run our monopoly and invest our own utility, it's just not geared towards our design to support diversified renewable energy sources. And so we need to break up with HIKO. It's a bad marriage and it's not serving our interests. So we will be looking at policies this coming session to figure out ways in which we can either one, improve HIKO's behavior so that their interests line up more with the public's or create an open relationship with HIKO and can see other people. That's quite an analogy you have there. Great, I just came up with it just now. I hope it's a backfire. And of course, this issue is very much in the air as the recent sale, essentially, of HIKO, of HEI to an offshore company just was rejected. Yes, that would be true. And so the future of energy is suddenly back on the table for discussion. So it's a very exciting time. Yes, it was a huge victory. I think we are still coming to terms with how big that victory was. We really dodged a bullet on that one because if Nextera had taken over our utility, it would have been a hundred times harder to get where we want to go. But so we have a chance now with that, with the way HIKO has already indicated that they're not interested in being our utility necessarily anymore. So let's seriously investigate what our options are. And maybe we can come to an agreement that benefits everyone, you know, Hawaiian Electrics investors and the public. And if not, we have to put the public's interests first. And... I wish more people said that. That's so nice. So tell me a little bit more. You mentioned we have a get outdoors program. We have programs where people go on hikes with the Sierra Club and the Hawaii Service Trip program. Is that what I'm saying? Yeah. Tell me just a little bit about that. And also, how can people get involved with the Sierra Club if they want? Can you tell us where they can connect with you on the internet? Our website is www.SierraClubHawaii.org. And there you can find... Say that again. SierraClubHawaii.org. All spelled out, .org. Thank you. And there you can find all of our outings, as we call them. Everything from these work days to hikes, to service trip projects where we do trail restoration. And yeah, so it's a great program. It's all volunteer run and we'll train people who are interested in hosting their own outings. We'll give you all you need to know about outdoor safety, CPR, whatever, all of the training you need to be a safe and effective hike leader and then encourage more people to participate. And just for my selfish interest, is this only on Oahu? No, yeah, every county has an outings program, yeah? And it's all volunteer run. And so on our website, you can go to each island and see what our outings programs are. And so it's a lot of Saturday, Sunday hikes, sunset hikes, those kinds of things. Like a lot of things that help to encourage the connection between people and the environment and do it in a way that doesn't have a negative impact on the environment. I think that's part of the problem. People kind of go, I have my smartphone and I have Facebook and Yelp and I know the hikes to go on and I just go. But oftentimes you don't recognize the extent of the impact that you have on the environment. Right, about 100 people are all going to the highest raked hike. We're having a significant impact. And it's important for us to really practice the values of take out what you carry in and not to try to clean your shoes so you don't carry invasive species, those kinds of things. So I really encourage people to go on a hike. If you're gonna go, especially if you're gonna go for the first time on a hike, go with a hike leader. They'll teach you everything you need to know and you'll have such a better experience because you'll learn about the native species, you'll learn about the history of the area and it would really improve your appreciation of the hike they've gone on. So. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, I'm here with Marty Townsend, Director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii. I wanna thank you once again for joining us. Thank you. We're here at the Ruderman Roundtable. I'm Senator Russell Ruderman from Pune District on the Big Island. We're here on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday. Thank you for joining us. Mahalo.