Gov. Josh Green is forming a group of experts and advocates to help formulate the state’s climate resilience policy. He’s calling it a Climate Advisory Team, but perhaps the group should more accurately be nicknamed the “Green Team,” since its focus is as much on money as climate. The team will advise the administration on how to set aside adequate funding to mitigate disaster risks and other needs created by climate change.

Green named some team members Thursday, calling them “our best thinkers in the state on this topic”; they include representatives of an investment banking firm involved in California utility wildfire mitigation, a law firm with wildfire experience and a wildfire litigation defense firm. Because complex monetary and legal analysis will be required of the team, including these experts is appropriate.

Green says other “stakeholders” will also be included, and a representative whose guiding concern is protecting interests of state residents and taxpayers must be among them.

As it stands, it’s concerning that the former CEO (until 2023) of Hawaii real estate investment firm Alexander &Baldwin has been named chair, in that A&B has been a key figure in water- and land-use battles on Maui for decades. In the aftermath of the Lahaina fire, the governor has acknowledged that many locals are wary of an imbalance of influence on state policy by large landowners. He must avoid reinforcing this suspicion by taking pains to provide maximum transparency and public input on advisory team actions.

The governor formed the advisory team to address issues in bills he’d supported that did not pass through the Legislature this year. All of them are climate- or conservation-related, but also focus on authorizing and regulating the collecting and/or setting aside of greenbacks — millions of them.

One bill would have allowed utility Hawaiian Electric to borrow money to pay for reducing or mitigating wildfire risks by issuing bonds at a lower interest rate than it could otherwise access — saving the company money from a standard bond issue, but nonetheless hooking in customers to pay the bonds back via higher rates.

Another would have authorized allocation of state money to create a property damage compensation fund that would also be contributed to by likely culprits in any future damaging wildfire.

The third, Green’s proposed climate impact fee aka “Green fee,” would be imposed on visitors, potentially as an add-on to the transient occupancy tax charged on hotel stays, and would pay for climate remedies such as strengthening or rebuilding infrastructure impacted by rising sea levels.

Green’s also concerned about insurance companies quitting Hawaii because of disaster risks, and wants to analyze state actions — also likely to be costly — to mitigate against that.

Deciding how much money to spend on climate-related ventures is always going to be a balancing act, since the state’s assets aren’t unlimited. The destructive Maui fires show how catastrophically costly disasters can be, and climate change also poses an outsized threat for Hawaii, as an island state — creating a need to adapt conservation efforts, agriculture, existing infrastructure, water supply and disaster planning and prevention.

Green is right to look ahead and seek expert advice on how the state and stakeholders, including state taxpayers and utility ratepayers, pay for wildfire mitigation and property damage in a disaster. The governor is also absolutely correct to get serious about planning for infrastructure costs related to climate change. What’s necessary here is that the money Hawaii gathers up is also sustainably sourced — harvested without driving the already overtaxed and overstretched median income resident into extinction, or driving the economic ecosystem out of balance by diverting resources to powerful interests.