It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the Maui conflagration, one of the most horrific natural disasters in American history.  I have a special place in my heart for Hawaii in general, and Lahaina in particular, because our family spent so much time there back in the eighties, usually at the Kaanapali Alii or The Whaler at Kaanapali Beach.

I still have vivid memories of having frequent dinners at a delightful outdoor café on the beach (the name of which long ago escaped my memory) and watching the sun slowly drop behind the ocean horizon.  No question about it, it was paradise.  Maui was the last place in the world I would have expected a deadly wildfire to break out.

Predictably, climate change activists are once again howling at the moon and demanding that Americans (not Chinese or Indians, mind you, but Americans) change their way of living to “save the planet.”  As usual, they have it all wrong because, if anything, the Maui tragedy demonstrated just how absurd it is to believe human beings can control the weather.

Reducing carbon emissions does not prevent people from being negligent or incompetent, and early reports suggest that the Maui fire was a result of bad management by Hawaiian Electric.  That is something authorities can address, but better management has nothing to do with changing the climate.

Miscreant John Podesta, a longtime ally of Horrible Hillary, was quick to say, without offering a smidgen of evidence, that hot temperatures caused the fires in Maui.  His claim that the current summer has seen “one climate disaster after another” is in the same genre of lies as “It’s settled science.”  Ominous sounding, but, as usual, no facts to back it up.

In truth, anyone who takes the trouble to read a few books on climate change will discover that the weather has actually become less extreme over the past hundred years, not more.  Further, the public has been sold a bill of goods about the ultimate bogeyman, carbon dioxide, which actually makes the planet greener.  Without carbon dioxide, the earth would become an inhospitable place and life would cease to exist.

The truth is that climate change is an all-purpose, two-step scam thought up by the scheming left.  Step one is to bray and wail that all evils — including racism, of course — are caused by climate change.  Step two is to implement more climate change regulations and laws for the purported purpose of “saving the planet,” regulations and laws that just happen to give government more power over citizens.

In addition, pushing the climate change narrative is an excellent way to pay off big donors.  The biggest payoff, of course, is to Joe Biden’s number-one benefactor, China, who profits more than any other country from climate change products like electric-vehicle batteries and solar panels.  Thus, climate change is the perfect control tool, because power seekers can point to it as the cause of virtually any problem one can imagine.  In fact, they can use it to create a problem that doesn’t even exist, and climate change itself is at the top of that list.

Anyone with a sixth-grade education knows that the climate has been changing for more than 4 billion years.  Regardless of what human beings do, the earth may heat up for the next hundred years — or the next million years.  Or it may cool off and bring about another ice age.  When Indonesia’s Mount Tambora volcano erupted in 1815, it spewed so much dust, ash, and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that it temporarily changed the world’s climate and reduced global temperatures so much that it brought about the infamous “Year Without a Summer.”

Nevertheless, we are told to believe that a thoroughly inept and corrupt government, a government that can’t control its own border or balance the nation’s budget, is capable of controlling the climate.  The truth is that there will never be an end to hurricanes, tornadoes, tidal waves, volcanos, and other natural disasters, which guarantees that the climate change hoax will go on indefinitely.

Unfortunately, that also means there will be millions more impressionable children like Greta Thunberg whose lives will be destroyed by shameless, unknowledgeable parents and unscrupulous politicians.  It’s an extreme form of child abuse, and, in my view, those contributing to it should be held criminally libel.  Hmmm … maybe that could begin with China Joe if his handlers direct him to declare a climate emergency.

In the meantime, Maui residents are in dire need of help, and $700 per household for food, clothing, and transportation isn’t going to cut it.  For starters, I would suggest taking 25 percent of every dollar earmarked for Ukraine and sending it to Hawaii instead.