Despite having had the biggest cumulative impact on the climate of any country in the world — we are now the first nation to officially begin withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord. On a long list of terrible policies from the last three years, I think history will look at…

It’s impossible to measure the true cost of our affordable housing crisis. What does it cost a child to grow up in a van parked in a dark corner of a Kaua’i beach park? How do you measure the pain of a family that’s been separated from their ancestral homeland…

I just had the fun school assignment to write a party platform for a fictional national level political party. As a candidate for county council, I recognize that 99% of what’s written here is far outside the scope of county government. And the large majority of it is still outside…

It was close to midnight and I couldn’t sleep. In the crib next to me lay my two month old daughter — blissfully unaware of the world that she was inheriting. …

A fifteen dollar minimum wage could lead to job losses. I support it anyway. *Note — I wrote this for my Urban Planning and Social Policy Class. It wasn’t written for anyone other than my professor to read. If it reads like a term paper — that’s because it is…

The work of campaigning is unlike anything I’ve ever done before. I’m much more comfortable reading a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research than I am waving signs on the side of the road or knocking on people’s doors. But, as I’m learning, part of running for…

The hardest thing about running for county council isn’t the early morning sign waving or the late nights away from home — it’s having conversations with people who are struggling to survive life on Kaua’i and not being able to provide an immediate hopeful answer. I just listened to a…

In the fight against climate change, Kaua’i is simultaneously in first place and in last place. Over the last ten years, KIUC skyrocketed Kaua’i from a 90% reliance on fossil fuels to 90% renewable energy on sunny days. And for that, we’re making national headlines. But, over the same time…

Edit — this post was originally written in 2016, but was updated slightly in October 2020. Last week The Garden Island Newspaper published an op-ed I wrote in support of most of the policies in the new Kaua’i General Plan update. The gist of the piece is that we are…