State lawmakers have awarded a six-figure grant to help finance a six-part documentary warning of the impacts of climate change on Hawaii which will be produced by a private film company led by a former chairman of the Oahu Group of the Sierra Club.

The grant would provide $135,000 to HI Share, a nonprofit organization that is acting as fiscal sponsor for Green Island Films LLC. Former Sierra Club Oahu Group Chairman Anthony Aalto is one of the principals of Green Island and is producer of the climate change documentary with the working title of “Pilikia.”

Aalto said he believes that “World War III has started, that climate change is a world war, it’s a war for the future of our world. We’ve already seen the equivalent of major battles with major battlefield casualties around the world.”

He cites the examples of the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017 and by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, Dominica and the U.S. Virgin Islands that same year. He also points to the deadly Camp Fire in Northern California last year, and the unprecedented rainfall on the north shore of Kauai during flooding April 13-16, 2018.

“The reason I use the war analogy is I want us to replicate our behavior the last time we were in a world war,” Aalto said. Communities mobilized along with the military during World War II, with homemakers going to work in the factories, children planting “Victory Gardens,” and seniors selling war bonds door to door, he said.

“Everybody felt that they had a role to play,” Aalto said. “They understood that we were in a struggle for our survival, a struggle for our existence. Everybody wanted to play their part.”

Given the scientific consensus that society faces an existential threat from global warming in the years ahead, Aalto believes we are in a similar situation now, “but the point is, we can prevent the worst from happening.”

“In that sense, this is a war that we can still win, but the only way it’s going to happen is if we get everybody engaged, everybody motivated,” he said. The television documentary Aalto plans to produce with director Mike Hinchey is designed to “reach everybody in Hawaii and explain to them the urgency of the crisis that we face,” Aalto said.

Rick Blangiardi, president and general manager of Hawaii News Now, said he is committed to airing the documentary twice during prime time on KGMB, KHNL and KFVE.

“We’re going to give some real unprecedented focus on this subject,” he said. “I can see us running each of those hours multiple times to make sure we make the right effort to get as many people engaged and informed as possible.”

“This is unprecedented for us; we’re excited about it; we think it’s the responsible thing to do; we’re going to do it the most serious and aggressive way we know how,” he said.

Blangiardi also said he is giving the project a boost by inviting Hawaii business leaders to a presentation June 20 to enlist their support for what would be a “public-private effort” that would complement state funding.

The Kauai flooding last year and Oahu’s close brush with Hurricane Lane recently underscored the hazards that confront the state.

“We want to enlist the attention, the awareness, the involvement, if you will, of all the stakeholders here because, let’s face it, we know even going through what we went through last year, we really feel where we are, the isolation. As island dwellers with nature, everybody’s invested in this,” Blangiardi said.

A major challenge, Aalto said, is that people are busy. “People have lives to live, especially in this state where so many people work two jobs or commute two hours each way, and it’s hard for people to focus on something that doesn’t seem to be an immediate problem.”

But individuals can make a difference, he said. For example, if every U.S. resident stopped eating meat for one day a week, the impact would be equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road, he said.

The “heavy lifting” that would truly make a difference in climate change must be done by governments and corporations, Aalto said. Those steps will include, for example, raising taxes to spend more money on infrastructure to protect against sea level rise and move coastal highways.

“That’s not going to happen without a massive popular push to get them to do it, because the things that they have to do aren’t going to be popular,” he said. “Throughout this series we are giving people examples for things they can do as individuals, and we are giving them reasons to hope.”

Green Island Films, which already has produced documentaries on homelessness in Hawaii and the Honolulu rail project, expects to complete photography for the climate change project by August, followed by months of postproduction work.