Ellison hopes to transform it into the “first economically viable, 100 percent green community.”
Isn’t that more or less what Hawaii was before the white people showed up?
FTFY. Ah, romanticism.
I think the word “community” generally implies the presence of some people.
The worst thing that has happened to Hawaii since it became a state was the federal court decision overturning the land trust and allowing actual ownership of the land rather than the sovereign “long term lease” model of use. It has driven people born on the islands to the mainland because they can no longer afford to live in the place of their birth…because rich assholes bid it all up to the point that actual regular people have no chance.
Ellison hopes to transform it into the “first economically viable, 100 percent green community.”
A likely story. He’s probably building a huge underground lair with a big leather chair, and adopting a large white fluffy cat.
Everyone seemed to feel very, very good. “I want to thank Mr. Ellison,” one fishing-boat captain says. “He’s got a vision, and he’s taking care of us over here on Lanai.”
The elevator pitch for Bioshock: Paradise.
It’s an interesting article, as it gets into some of the political pushback that Ellison is getting for his plans; the island’s previous owner decided to sell after his plan for a wind farm failed. I’m wondering how the island’s coast will be affected by rising sea levels, as one of the thoughts that I had was that Ellison was interested in making the island self-sustaining as a hedge against climate change.
If I had my own Hawaiian island, I’d select my enemies and play “The Island of Doctor Moreau” again, and again, and again, and always win.
There’s also The Most Dangerous Game.
The most important quote from the piece -
“This place was developed on the backs of humble people; people who cared for each other. When you live on an island, you can’t afford to make enemies. A compassion grows from that. Now it feels like everything’s being driven from outside by some force that is not part of that tradition.”
Driven by ego…
Anyone who’s spent any time in the Bay Area, particularly before and through the first tech boom knows one simple fact - Larry Ellison is one of the biggest assholes on the planet.
I worry for the residents of Lanai and what will happen with his experiment there.
Hawaii is truly a magical place that happens to be the 50th state. My mom was born and raised there, as was her mother, and I’ve spent a lot of time there. It’s unfortunate that this corporate take over wasn’t more sensitive to the people already LIVING there.
uh, no. The pre-contact Polynesians where economically viable, but hardly “green.”
The rats and and pigs the Polynesians brought with them drove many local animals to extinction, including a stunning variety of birds. Also the Polynesians practiced intensive agriculture, which heavily impacted certain pre-contact biomes.
None of this is to slag on the Polynesians.
Humans tend to have profound and often negative impact on any ecosystem they come across, be they masterful open ocean navigators or sugar planting colonialists.
They certainly did impact their ecosystems, but isolated island cultures tend to eventually reach some kind of ecological balance with their environment—if only because the ones which don’t will inevitably die out (see: Easter Islanders).
Or an Art Deco technocratic objectivist “paradise”.
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