Hawaii - Jeff Campbell [0]
Destination Hawaii
Getting Started
Events Calendar
Itineraries
History
The Culture
Food & Drink
Environment
O’ahu
Hawai’i the Big Island
Maui
Lana’i
Moloka’i
Kaua’i
Directory
Transportation
Health
Language
Glossary
The Authors
Behind the Scenes
Map Legend
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Destination Hawaii
It is easy to see why Hawaii has long been synonymous with ‘paradise.’ Just look around – at the sugary beaches and rustling palms, at the sculpted emerald cliffs, at the coral reefs and smoking volcanoes. The natural beauty of these scattered islands in the cobalt blue Pacific Ocean is heavenly without the need for promotional embellishment.
Hawaii is that rare place where uniqueness abounds. It is certainly the USA’s most unique state, but even within Polynesia it stands out. The islands’ Native Hawaiian culture distinguishes it, of course, but nowhere else will you find its particular blend of ethnicities, its pidgin tongue, its amalgam of East and West. Almost halfway between continental Asia and North America, Hawaii lives at the edge of both, yet fashions its own fluid center in the middle of the sea.
What is unique, though – what is endemic to a particular ecosystem – can be easily knocked out of balance and lost. Hawaii has never been more aware of its own fragility. This applies to its environment, which modern industry and invasive species threaten daily; to its economy, which is not built for the long-term sustainability of either the land or its residents’ quality of life; and to its multiethnic society and its ‘aloha spirit’ – that much-abused shorthand for the inherited ancient Hawaiian traditions of reciprocity, openness and mutual loving care.
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Fast Facts
Population: 1,288,198
Gross state product: $63.4 billion
Median household income: $63,750 (5th in the US)
Miles of coastline: 750
Size: 6450 sq miles (the USA’s fourth smallest state)
Percentage of marriages that are interethnic: about 50%
Percentage of residents who want mandatory recycling: over 80%
Energy produced from oil: 89%
Energy from alternative sources: 5%
Average number of tourists in Hawaii each day: 180,000
Cans of Spam consumed in Hawaii annually: 7 million
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These issues are not unique to Hawaii, but Hawaii’s island ecology makes them unusually urgent. Like a canary in a coal mine, Hawaii is sounding a warning about the need to adopt a self-sustaining island mentality. For half a millennium Hawaii existed in complete isolation and its people flourished; today the state imports over 85% of its food and fuel, and residents like to ask, ‘Could we survive if the boats stop coming?’ The answer, right now, is ‘no’. But Hawaii sees what it must do to change, and there has been no greater validation of its perspective than the 2008 election of Hawaii-born Barack Obama as the 44th US president.
Hawaii is naturally proud simply to have one of its own in the White House – someone who appreciates shave ice and can bodysurf like a local. Born and mostly raised on O’ahu, the child of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama attended the exclusive Punahou School, where he graduated from high school in 1979 (for a tour of Obama’s old neighborhood, Click here). After that, he left Hawaii, getting a law degree at Harvard and a political education in Chicago, but as First Lady Michelle Obama has said, ‘You can’t really understand Barack until you understand Hawaii.’
For Hawaii residents, a lot of what that means is understanding the dynamics of a multicultural household and a multiracial heritage. Hawaii was the last state to join the Union in 1959, largely because of US political reluctance to embrace its ethnically mixed population. Now, 50 years later, President Obama’s calls for consensus-building and respect for diversity, his emphasis on renewable energy, his hopes to build a balanced economy that sustains all peoples and environments – these national aspirations also exemplify, and may in part arise from his upbringing in, Hawaii.
Sustainability is the mantra