Wayne’s Sierra Club World: The Last Wave?

by Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director | Reading time: 2 minutes

This month’s Wayne’s Sierra Club World is a reflection on an April 26 workshop with John A. Burns Schools of Medicine professor and 2024 Climate and Health Equity Fellow Dr. Martina Kamaka, on “Environmental Health, Climate Change, and Sustainability” at the Pediatric Academic Association’s 2025 Convention in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

Doctors for children.  Struggling for answers.  
Searching for actions, to save our dying planet.

What we do in the next ten years will be the most significant
In the history of humanity
For the very existence 
Of humankind
I told them.

What kind of devastation will our children witness?

What kind of hell will they watch their own children inherit?

I saw a meme on my phone that said climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones, with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you are the one filming it.

I saw a post that said if we actually saw the kind of world our kids will experience, we would be ripping our consumption-addicted system of capitalism apart with our bare hands.

But dead-end capitalism is not a building you can tear down.

It is a disease in our own heads, a parasite - that makes us compete against one another, and hate, 
and despair

As we commit slow suicide, 

As we kill our grandmother 
earth.

An action/antidote: Let us make it a daily mission to spend some time reminding ourselves, and the strangers we come across,

to love one another,

And to love ʻāina,
As it has always loved us, and always will 

And most of all to love those human and otherwise
Now caught in the whitewash
Of this last wave of destruction

Before we finally turn the tide.

Oh grandma. Halmeoni. Obaasan. (How terribly do I miss you)

I told these doctors of children:

The answer, for now, is to focus on our three pillars 
Of a livable, hopeful future,

For which English has no equivalent:

Wai (the foundation of life itself);

ʻĀina (that which feeds, in all of the ways);

And most importantly 

Kaiāulu - 

Our deep and abiding love for one another, and for our home.

And even children, and especially children
can take action
To help us all remember

To be curious

To explore

To find wonder in this finite life, on this precious earth

And most of all, to love one another

Once again.

(Dedicated to Dr. Ryder K. Onopa, whose photos are included in this reflection).