Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz is clearly a student of the "Never let a crisis go to waste" school of thought as he's more than happy to turn the destruction of Maui and the deaths of over 1,000 people and missing children into an opportunity to push the left's favorite religion; climate change. 

Appearing on CNN to discuss the fires, Schatz began his Chicken Little routine to frighten people into believing this was somehow nature reacting to man-made climate change. 

“We all have to understand that severe weather events are going to get more frequent and more severe," said Schatz. "Hawaii is a place that has experienced volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, & hurricanes & tropical storms, and we’ve had a few wildfires but nothing that threatened a whole city, nothing that flattened a whole city."

"And I just think this is the new normal for not just the state of Hawaii, but for the whole planet, for the whole country," he continued. "So, you know, as we contend with increasing severe weather all the time, we’re not only going to need to take action on climate, we actually need to be prepared in terms of our emergency response at the state, local, & federal level for the kind of disaster that maybe you hadn’t contemplated before.”

Hawaii Sen. @brianschatz on the man-made Maui wildfire: “This is the new normal for … the whole planet” pic.twitter.com/FP7XeODyTz

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) August 21, 2023

Did these fires on Maui suddenly arise from a bad case of climate change? 

Of course not.

The answer is far more simple. Maui's infrastructure wasn't up to snuff and power lines that weren't properly insulated sparked fires on its greenery. It's not an uncommon occurrence. In fact, the greenery and the power lines don't often mix well and fires spring up from time to time. 

As RedState previously covered, Hawaii's Democrat politicians dragged their feet in getting the necessary water to fight the fires to MFD by a whopping five hours, causing the fires to spread out of control and damaging infrastructure further. 

(READ: Official Who Ignored Request for Water During Maui Inferno: 'Water Requires Conversations Around Equity')

According to Fortune, residents even heard the buzzing of the power lines before the fires truly began. Furious winds had hit the island the night before the fires started. One resident, Shane Treu watched a power pole snap and bring the lines down onto the dry grass below, starting a fire immediately:

“I heard ‘buzz, buzz,’” the 49-year-old resort worker recounted to The Associated Press. “It was almost like somebody lit a firework. It just ran straight up the hill to a bigger pile of grass and then, with that high wind, that fire was blazing.”

Treu’s video and others captured the early moments of what would become the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. Now the footage has emerged as key evidence pointing to fallen utility lines as the possible cause. Hawaiian Electric Co. faces criticism for not shutting off the power amid high wind warnings and keeping it on even as dozens of poles began to topple.

ABC News also had eyewitness reports of Maui's trees snapping and coming down on power lines in the high winds. 

On August 7, more than an hour before Maui authorities said the first fire erupted according to authorities, a security camera at the Maui Bird Conservation Center in the east Maui region of Upcountry, captured a bright flash in the woods.

"It's windy, and then there's a flash, and I think that's when a tree is falling on a power line," Jennifer Pribble, a senior research coordinator at the Conservation Center, said in the video that was later released. "The power goes out, our generator kicks on, the camera comes back online, and then the forest is on fire."

ABC News reported that Bob Marshall, CEO of Whisker Labs, a company that deals in sensors that monitor precursors to electrical fires, noted a whopping 122 faults during the high winds. Around 5:00 am on August 8, the company recorded 27 faults before losing all connection to their sensors in Lahaina 90 minutes later. 

The average fault rate per day was around five. 

So it wasn't climate change. The explanation is pretty simple. High winds from Hurricane Dora (hurricanes are a common phenomenon) hundreds of miles south of Hawaii created high pressure on the Pacific Ocean that enhanced wind gusts up past 80 mph. Maui is currently experiencing a drought (an unfortunate phenomenon humans have experienced since before written history) and when the winds hit the trees and the power lines, it caused the two unintentionally interact, thus sparking the fires. 

This isn't climate change, it was just a bad mix of common occurrences that lead to the fires. The real crime is in Hawaii's Democrat politicians prioritizing climate change initiatives over securing the island's infrastructure and proceeding to drag their feet when they were needed most. 

In the end, Schatz is just another disgusting climate zealot standing on the bodies of the dead to use them as a soapbox for a false politically-driven religion. The only "new normal" we need to worry about is the left using any and every incident as an excuse to push their own agenda.