Now that President Biden has thankfully concluded his ham-fisted attempt at empathizing with the survivors of the Maui wildfire, many are wondering what comes next for the besieged residents and what continued dangers they may be facing. Some of you older, less-enlightened codgers might be concerned about the many funerals to come or the ongoing search for hundreds of missing people, many of whom may also have tragically perished. Others might worry about how resources can be most effectively deployed to aid thousands of people who are suddenly homeless and without access to food and fresh water. But at least according to the Associated Press, you’re all missing The Big Picture. The true looming threat is… climate gentrification. Wait. What?

More than 3,000 buildings in Lahaina were damaged by fire, smoke or both. Insured property losses alone already total some $3.2 billion, according to Karen Clark & Company, a prominent disaster and risk modeling firm.

With a housing crisis that has priced out many Native Hawaiians as well as families that have been there for decades, concerns are rising that the state could become the latest example of “climate gentrification,” when it becomes harder for local people to afford housing in safer areas after a climate-amped disaster.

t’s a term Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning at Tulane University School of Architecture, first started lecturing about in 2013 after he noticed changes in housing markets following extreme weather events.

Most of you already knew that climate change was going to be involved in this explanation somewhere, I’m sure. They apparently haven’t figured out a way to blame the wildfire on racism yet, but I’m confident they have some of their top people working overtime on that as we speak. But “climate gentrification” was a new one to my ears.

Actual gentrification has become an issue in some communities. This is particularly true in poorer areas where developers buy up property and invest in significantly increasing its value and appeal, eventually pricing lower-income residents out of the market. Of course, others could refer to the process as upward mobility, but to each their own.

That could certainly happen in Maui, where so many properties are nothing but ashes at the moment. Developers might come in with an attractive offer that some owners might consider rather than waiting and looking for someplace to stay while they fight with the insurance companies and attempt to begin the rebuilding process. But in the end, anyone who agrees to such a deal and signs off on it, and cashes the check will have decided their own fate. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but recovering from a catastrophe of this nature rarely involves happy endings.

But even if we assume that some amount of gentrification will be taking place, how does that directly tie to climate change? Maui literally sits in the middle of paradise, but paradise comes with some inherent risks. Hurricanes are common in the Pacific and it’s always worth remembering that all of these people literally live on a series of volcanos. Of course, the Maui wildfire wasn’t caused by volcanic activity. We know that the fire started either when lightning struck the powerlines above Lahaina or when other lines were blown down during a windstorm. The events were caught on video.

Are we really going to blame a summer thunderstorm in the tropics on climate change? And even if we were to somehow accept that, how is that directly linked to gentrification? It seems as if the gentrification would be equally possible if the fire had been intentionally set by arsonists. The people of Maui have bigger things to worry about at the moment, including finding and burying their dead and trying to stay alive as the recovery and reconstruction operations unfold. They probably don’t need to be preached to by the climate cult at this point.