Alaska is a very important area for U.S. fossil fuel development. But, somewhat paradoxically, rural Alaska and its 250 Native villages are facing an energy crisis: Residents are forced to burn diesel for electricity; a gallon of gas sells for around $10 in some communities; and gasoline and diesel have been barged in from as far as Russia.

An event called “Challenges and Opportunities for Renewable Energy in Alaska” sponsored by the Center for American Progress and the Alaska Federation of Natives yesterday helped shed light on an extraordinarily important local solution to this energy crisis — renewable energy.

As Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), who spoke at the event, described:

…we bring a lot of people up there to see what the opportunities are.  Once they come there and they see for example a windmill working in a small remote village, and what it’s doing and lowering costs, they got it there, they’re maintaining it in very unique conditions, suddenly you get people saying “well maybe there’s something here.”  Or some of these other smaller projects.  So I think from a private investor standpoint, we are a unique opportunity from that perspective.

Watch it:

Alaska has tremendous renewable energy potential.  The state’s location on the Ring of Fire provides geothermal resources, its rivers provide untapped hydropower, its oceans have over 90% of the nation’s tidal resources, its vast forests provide biomass resources, and many areas have high class wind. Dozens of projects — ranging from wind to geothermal — have already been built and have started generating power for communities.

Villages in Alaska are generally remote, and approximately 150 have stand-alone electrical grids that prevent traditional, centralized energy development. However, panelists at the event discussed how this challenge can provide opportunities — particularly when it comes to designing innovative, decentralized renewable energy technologies that could be exported to the developing world.

While there are tremendous opportunities to scaling up renewables in Alaska, there are also challenges. These include human capacity, overlapping government agencies, and a lack of incentives. As one panelist, Scott Borgerson, put it: Alaska remains one of the world’s last “emerging markets.”

So while companies start eying offshore oil resources off the coast of Alaska, perhaps they should be looking to renewables instead.

Jessica Goad is the Manager of Outreach and Public Communication for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress.

Lennie Moren (left) & Jane A. Darden protesting disenfranchisement at the Anchorage Assembly (via Bent Alaska).

Last week’s election in Anchorage, Alaska was rife with controversy and confusion that continues to play out. At stake was Proposition 5, which would have created non-discrimination protections for the LGBT community. The measure seemingly failed, but opponents of the measure had spread false information about voter registration, many ballots are in question, and many polling stations had to turn voters away because they ran out of ballots. Last night, the Anchorage Assembly rejected a resolution to investigate the election with a 7-4 vote, but some members expressed interest in a re-vote once more information is collected.

Meanwhile, conservatives are boasting the apparent victory after running incredibly offensive anti-trans ads against the measure. The American Family Association highlighted fellow hate group leader Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel using the “stunning defeat” to play into the National Organization for Marriage’s race-baiting tactics:

STAVER: This was a stunning defeat, because the homosexual agenda organizations thought that they were going to have this as an agenda that would just simply roll through Anchorage, perhaps through Alaska, and then push this across the country. They were stopped dead in their tracks. This is a great celebration for the family. It’s a great victory for those of us who believe that we should not elevate sexual behavior to a protected status like race.

Staver also claimed that Anchorage proved Americans “still stand strong to protect the natural family.” This blatant attack on the families of same-sex couples is not only offensive, but irrelevant, considering Proposition 5 had nothing to do with legal recognition for same-sex relationships.

Anchorage makes a compelling example for how the rhetoric in national politics can play a big part in local issues. Because of the animus and dirty tactics utilized by conservatives, Anchorage’s LGBT community continues to be treated like second-class citizens.

The campaign against Prop 5 is being led by an Anchorage megachurch known as Anchorage Baptist Temple, which has donated 61 percent of the nearly $80,000 effort. Claiming that there’s no evidence of “widespread discrimination” and that “Anchorage is already a tolerant city,” these opponents are disproving their own point with a series of ads that portray transgender people in incredibly negative ways. One ad portrays trans people as “transvestites” who are somehow a threat to children while another shows a cross-dressing man using a women’s locker room to the detriment of a gym owner’s business. Watch them:

A third ad tries to bait gay bar owners into thinking they’d have to hire straight bartenders — as if they don’t already.

That these attitudes are so candidly on display proves the need for Proposition 5 to pass. The Yes on 5 campaign has responded with an ad of its own, featuring a real transgender person discussing his real experiences to counter the offensive animated portrayals. Watch it:

Anchorage votes on Prop 5 next Tuesday, April 3.

BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. and Conoco Phillips Alaska told the Senate Resources Committee there are projects the companies could do on Alaska’s North Slope to increase oil production, but those projects will have trouble attracting capital investment because of high state taxes. . . . Conoco Phillips spokeswoman Natalie Lowman said the company “has committed to spending $5 billion in the next 3 to 5 years jointly with our co-venturers if there is a tax change similar to what HB 110 proposed.”

BP and Conoco Phillips testified against SB 192, which would only cut oil company taxes by $200 million a year.

Gov. Sean Parnell (R-AK), formerly the director of government relations for ConocoPhillips, supports House Bill 110.

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy approaches the Russian-flagged tanker vessel Renda Tuesday evening.

By Kiley Kroh

Today the Russian tanker Renda, escorted by the United States’ only operating icebreaking vessel, will attempt to make its final push in delivering much-needed fuel to the remote, icebound community of Nome, Alaska.  The ships’ progress has been impeded by high winds, strong currents, brutal cold, and thick sea ice. They moved just 50 feet on Tuesday and slowed even further on Wednesday.  With a 25-foot ice ridge still blocking access to the harbor, the tanker will be forced to attempt offloading its cargo through a mile-long hose to shore.

The tanker Renda and ice-breaker Healy arrive in the area of the ice-choked Nome harbor today.  Photo KNOM.

Ordinarily, the last delivery is made prior to the ice closing in, but this year it was delayed by a “monster storm” that hit Alaska in early November covering an area twice the size of Texas.  The tempest produced hurricane-force winds, blizzard conditions, coastal flooding, and spurred evacuations of many coastal communities.  The 3,500 residents of Nome, a city located on the western coast of Alaska, rely on tanker barges to deliver home heating oil, gasoline, and diesel for the winter months. The village has enough fuel to last until March, but ice in the Bering Sea won’t clear until midsummer.  In a bid to avoid the $9 per gallon gasoline that would likely result from flying fuel into the isolated city, the Nome-based Sitnasuak Native Corporation signed a contract to have a double-hulled Ice Classed Russian tanker deliver the 1.3 million gallons of fuel.

The unprecedented effort has captured worldwide attention and also brought serious concerns to light about the nation’s insufficient resources and infrastructure in the Arctic.  With the President of Royal Dutch Shell expressing confidence yesterday that his company will begin drilling in the fragile Arctic waters off Alaska’s northern coast this summer, addressing these concerns becomes even more urgent.

The Coast Guard is responsible for search and rescue, spill response and the national defense missions in the Arctic.  Their capacity in the region is limited and includes woefully inadequate icebreaking capacity.

The Coast Guard’s only working icebreaker is the 12 year-old Healy, which is mainly deployed on scientific missions and can only break through thinner ice. It has two other heavy-duty polar icebreakers, but both are out of commission at the moment. By comparison, Russia currently operates 20 icebreakers, including seven powerful nuclear-powered vessels, and China is in the process of building its second icebreaker.

As the Arctic melts at an alarming rate, the infrastructure in the U.S. Arctic is incapable of supporting the imminent increase in activity that will come from greater access to marine resources. Alaska has no deepwater offshore port or on-shore harbor along its western or North Slope shores.  As a recent E&E report explains, the Army Corps of Engineers has undertaken a three-year, $3 million study to determine whether or not to build at least one deepwater port in the US Arctic.  However, “once a site is selected, the financing, planning, design and construction could take 20 years to complete. Industry officials privately estimate that the cost of the project could climb to $1 billion.”

The extremely harsh environmental conditions complicate any effort to industrialize the Arctic, and put pristine natural resources in jeopardy.  Testifying before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard in July, Dr. Andrew Metzger of the University of Alaska Fairbanks stated,

“The rigors of the Arctic cannot be overstated.  People and facilities in this environ must contend with extreme cold, permanently frozen soil (permafrost) and lack of daylight in winter. In addition, coastal communities and marine infrastructure must contend with intense wind and wave conditions, subsea permafrost, accelerating erosion and potentially catastrophic hazards from sea ice. These harsh conditions will significantly shape development of marine infrastructure in the Arctic as well as stakeholder activities.”

An upcoming report from the Center for American progress, due to be released later this month, will examine in greater detail America’s deficiencies in regard to Arctic infrastructure and oil spill response preparedness, and suggest steps to be taken before activities, such as drilling, commence in the world’s last unspoiled frontier.

Today the world watches as the Renda and Healy wait until daylight to begin the final stage of their 10-day journey.  If the mission is successful, it will bring temporary relief to the residents of Nome.  But the challenges associated with a permanent U.S. presence in the Arctic will be much more difficult to overcome.

– Kiley Kroh is Associate Director of Ocean Communications at the Center for American Progress.

Related Post:

• We Have “Learned Nothing” from BP Disaster: Obama Opens More of Arctic to Offshore Drilling

Cordova, Alaska is buried by snow.

The National Guard estimates more than 18 feet of snow has fallen the past few weeks, and the drifts can measure 12 to 14 feet high. The Associated Press reports:

“It’s a lot of snow. I’ve lived here 33 years and this is the most snow I’ve ever seen,” she said by phone. “The thing I’m impressed most with is we haven’t had any injuries. Maybe a few back strains from all of the shoveling. But we have a very, very efficient, professional emergency staff here.” [...]

The town issued a disaster proclamation last week after three weeks of relentless snow overwhelmed local crews working around the clock and filled snow dump sites.

“We had no alternative but to declare an emergency,” Cordova Mayor Jim Kallander said. “It became a life-safety issue.”

While Cordova, Alaska is familiar with snow, the snow dump fueled by climate change has immobilized the city. Thankfully there have been no injuries but like Cordova resident Wendy Rainney told the AP, “This is more quantity than can be handled.”

Satellite loop of Bering Sea superstorm

…ALASKA WEST COAST TO BE HIT BY ONE OF THE MOST SEVERE BERING SEA STORMS ON RECORD…

A POWERFUL AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM OF NEAR RECORD OR RECORD MAGNITUDE IS BEARING DOWN ON THE WEST COAST OF ALASKA. . . .

. . . THIS INCLUDES THE VILLAGES OF NOME AND KIVALINA WHERE MAJOR DAMAGE FROM COASTAL FLOODING AND STRONG WINDS IS EXPECTED . . .

AGAIN…THIS WILL BE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND LIFE THREATENING STORM OF AN EPIC MAGNITUDE RARELY EXPERIENCED. ALL PEOPLE IN THE AREA SHOULD TAKE PRECAUTIONS TO SAFEGUARD THEIR LIVES AND PROPERTY.

“The current lack of sea ice in the Bering Sea will allow this storm to maximize its impact,” the Weather Channel’s Tim Ballisty writes. Alaskans are also bracing for the threat of oil spilled by ships rammed ashore, pipelines broken, and by coastal oil facilities hit by waves and large chunks of ice.

In 2008, Kivalina sued Exxon Mobil and other top carbon polluters because climate change is destroying the village. In 2009, a judge dismissed the case, saying the damages are a “political question.” The case is now on appeal.

“Climate change is already wreaking havoc in our environment….”

by Colleen Swan and Christine Shearer in a re-post

On October 3, 2011, the Obama administration said it was moving forward with oil-drilling leases off the coast of Alaska issued by the Bush administration in 2008. The leases had been challenged by environmental groups, opposition that gained momentum after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Yet the Interior Department said it would uphold nearly 500 leases issued in the Chukchi Sea, a victory for oil companies in the battle over Arctic Ocean drilling.

Those opposing the leases say there is no proven clean-up method for an oil spill in such harsh terrain and ice-choked waters, and that the environmental assessment done by oil companies for the area is inadequate.

There are also Alaska Natives living off the coast of the Chukchi Sea who worry about how the drilling and its impacts will affect their way of life. One of them is Colleen Swan, a resident of Kivalina, Alaska. Kivalina is a largely Inupiat community on a barrier reef island in the northwest of the state. The island already faces erosion from climate change, and its residents are trying to relocate. In the meantime, they are still dependent on the local environment. Colleen shared some of her thoughts on the oil leases:

The oil leases, no matter where in the Arctic, will affect all people who live off the wild life from the ocean, because it will disrupt the migrations of sea mammals. Here are some points I like to make when the timing is appropriate:

In the event of an oil spill, the people in coastal communities are the ones whose lives are impacted directly, yet are the ones who are least prepared for such a disaster. These are communities of people who have no means to respond to oil spills to protect their shores and their villages from the oil slick.

The oil companies and the government who issues such permits will continue with business as usual and the oil companies will recover. They have reserves to fall back on. We don’t. Once we lose our livelihood, our subsistence way of life, it’s gone for a long, long time. The ocean will not recover as quickly as the oil companies and neither will the coastal communities.

The oil companies have their oil spill response plans, they have their resources. The government permit issuers don’t live up here; they will not be personally impacted. The coastal communities have no oil spill response plan that would enable us to protect our communities – we have no alternative food source identified aside from the land animals, which are not nearly enough to supply all of our needs throughout the year.

The fact that we are coastal communities, especially in Arctic Alaska, means that we would also lose our main food source, food that sustains us through the long, cold, harsh winters. The food we eat survives in the Arctic and it enables us to survive also in this climate. More than 3/4ths of our diet comes from the ocean.

These things are not thought through by neither the oil companies nor the government. As long as we are lacking in our ability to respond to oil spills, the plans that have been approved are seriously lacking. They have not begun to even comprehend the meaning of an oil spill in our already fragile environment.

Climate change is already wreaking havoc in our environment, especially in the oceans. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have caused serious harm to the ocean because of how CO2 reacts in the ocean: it has caused the ocean to become increasingly acidic, especially in the Arctic oceans.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  has determined that not enough research has been done in the Arctic waters.

The entire Arctic is seriously lacking in scientific understanding of the current condition due to climate change. Because of how climate change has affected our relocation project and has caused stumbling blocks for our progress, climate change needs to be a consideration to be factored into any permitting or other federal or government-based action or decision. There is no telling how a changing climate, which has affected the ice conditions in the Arctic, will impact oil development activities.

A warming climate has caused ice conditions to deteriorate. Yet, at the same time, because it is in the beginning stages of change, whether we have enough ice covering from year to year or no ice is unpredictable. The ice conditions seem to fluctuate from year to year between adequate ice build-up for whaling activities or not enough ice to support the hunters. This fact alone challenges the decision made to move forward with Arctic Offshore oil exploration and proves that there still is not enough information for government to be issuing permits for any oil development offshore. The Northwest Passage along the coast of Alaska is still not completely open and the amount of ice covering in the winter/spring of 2010/2011 proves that.

A 2011 report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey called for ”More native dialogue” of the local people in studies conducted for offshore oil development “to address science gaps, including subsistence impacts.

I haven’t even begun to completely articulate the entire issue. Life in the Arctic is not that simple. It’s not as cut and dried as the permit issuers and the oil companies imply that it is. The Arctic oceans are complicated and because of a changing climate, unpredictable.

This piece was originally published in the Conductive Chronicle and was re-printed with permission.

Related pieces:

• As Melting Arctic Sea Ice Opens Up Oil and Gas Resources, Secretary Salazar Backs Offshore Drilling
• After North Sea Oil Spill, Shell Prepares to Drill in the Arctic Where There is ‘No Infrastructure’ for Clean Up

Colleen Swan was born and raised in Kivalina, Alaska. She is a Kivalina City Council member and a Commissioner of the Northwest Arctic Borough Economic Development Commission, and has been involved in the relocation project of Kivalina since it began in 1992.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral scholar in science, technology, and society studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. She is Managing Editor of Conducive, and author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story.

Warming climate triggers sweeping change for Interior Alaska Natives

Warmer winters, thinner ice, stranger weather — climate change has begun to undermine subsistence life along the Yukon River, according to a new federal study that collected and analyzed observations by Native residents in two southwestern Alaska villages.

“They expressed concerns ranging from safety, such as unpredictable weather patterns and dangerous ice conditions, to changes in plants and animals as well as decreased availability of firewood,” say the researchers in this story about their work that was posted by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The study, published this month in the journal of Human Organization, found that hunters and elders in the Yup’ik communities of St. Mary’s and Pitka’s Point noticed a litany of dramatic climate shifts over the course of their lives, forcing changes in how they gather food and wood while making it more difficult to read the sky correctly before heading out into the tundra.

Among the findings:

• The weather seems to change more quickly than it used to — sometimes growing unexpectedly worse — making it harder to plan trips into the country to hunt or gather food.
• Spring snow depth has decreased, leading to failures in the summer crop of salmonberries — an important food staple — once the tundra dries out.
• Spring flooding doesn’t last as long, and the quicker plunge in river levels following breakup has an unexpected consequence. The year’s new supply of driftwood logs — traditionally used to replenish firewood caches for heating homes — now sometimes gets stranded away from the riverbank in brush, where it’s harder to find, haul out and cut up.
• Rivers themselves don’t freeze as hard or as long during winter, and contain larger and more frequent spans of open water, making travel by snowmachines and dog team dangerous. During summer, more extensive gravel bars make boating more difficult.

Careful climate practices boost businesses

Several Republican presidential candidates — Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the fore — are dismissing climate change as a concoction of misguided or self-serving scientists.

But a growing number of Main Street and regional business leaders — types often viewed as Republican-leaning — are taking the issue ever-more seriously, if not to save the world at least to serve their bottom lines.

Each year the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, Partners for Livable Communities and the Institute for Sustainable Development give out “Green Plus” awards to local chambers and communities that have launched exemplary, community-wide efforts to “go green” with varieties of carbon-saving initiatives.

Winners for 2011 include Cleveland, Chattanooga, Tenn., Savannah, Ga., North Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Local efforts have been getting hands-on carbon counseling for several years from ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA.

Climate change may leave Mount Everest ascent ice-free, say climbers

Climbers and custodians of Everest say that rapid climate change could soon make for an ice-free ascent of the world’s tallest mountain.

Their warning comes come amid a new international effort to gauge the effects of climate change in the Himalayas – and shield local people from potential hazards. A US-funded mission, led by the Mountain Institute, is meeting in Kathmandu to try to find practical solutions to the threat of catastrophic high-altitude flooding from lakes forming at the foot of melting glaciers.

Udall wants GAO to investigate whether mining profits are being properly taxed

With profits soaring for hard-rock mining and oil and gas companies doing business on public lands, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is leading the charge to get the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate whether American taxpayers are getting their fair share.

Udall, cousin of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, sent a letter to GAO officials Thursday asking the agency to “undertake an examination of the value of minerals extracted and the amount of revenues collected in fiscal year 2010.” U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., also signed the letter.

“The U.S Department of the Interior manages approximately 700 million acres of subsurface federal minerals on public land and 1.7 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf,” the lawmakers wrote. “These minerals include hard-rock minerals — such as gold, silver and copper — that are available without having to pay a royalty.

“It is vitally important that the American taxpayer receives a fair return for the mineral resources extracted from federal land.”

The lawmakers want the GAO to prepare a report on the minerals being extracted under the 1872 Mining Law, which does not require royalties, and various other mineral leasing acts. Specifically, they want to know:

BP asks permission to start new Gulf drilling

BP is asking regulators to approve a blueprint for new deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since its Macondo well blew out last year, triggering the nation’s worst oil spill.

In a filing with the U.S. government made public this week, the British oil company seeks to expand on previously approved drilling plans at its Kaskida prospect, about 220 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Federal regulators broadly signed off on BP’s plans to drill up to five wells at the site in 2008. In the new filing, BP is asking permission to drill two more wells at Kaskida and change the location of two others.

If the exploration plan were approved, BP still would have to get the government’s approval to drill individual wells at the site, with each vetted separately.

BP said its plan embraces “enhanced performance standards” that go beyond federal requirements, including backup emergency equipment and engineer-witnessed testing of cement used in wells.

In July, the company pledged to abide by those voluntary safeguards for its Gulf drilling, in a bid to reassure regulators and the public that it can resume safe offshore exploration and has learned the lessons of last year’s disaster.

Yesterday, however, a trial judge in Anchorage, Alaska struck down this law for violating the Alaska Constitution’s guarantee of that “all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights, opportunities, and protection under the law”:

The court finds that the legislation fails to pass even the minimal scrutiny that economic burdens trigger. [...] If the policy underlying the Tax Exemption’s additional benefit to married couples is the recognition that people in long term, committed relationships build their lives together, then there is no reason to distinguish between married couples and couples who would make the marital commitment but for their sexual orientation.

If this decision is upheld on appeal — and there is good reason to believe that it will be — it could have sweeping implications for gay rights in Alaska. Because the court concluded that one anti-gay law does not survive the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny under the state’s constitution, the court’s rationale provides a powerful precedent suggesting that any law that discriminates against gay couples cannot survive scrutiny.

That is, of course, except for one. Alaska’s constitution expressly forbids marriage equality — although it does not forbid gay couples from enjoying the package of legal rights normally associated with marriage. Nevertheless, there is nothing in Alaska law that prevents the state courts from recognizing the right of gay couples to join together in civil unions.

Santorum: "Nothing lives" in "dead flat," "frozen" Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

You’re worried about people being uninsured, why don’t you some drilling in Alaska, and make sure they’ve got jobs? You’re worried about the uninsured? I’ll get you insurance. You produce more oil, we’d have a stronger economy, a lot more people would be insured. I would expect that there are some here who say that we can’t do that because of the caribou. But don’t come and talk to me, well, let’s be cutting the uninsured. You cannot have it both ways. You have to look at what’s rational and reasonable. The president is an ideologue!

Watch it:

Despite the oft-repeated conservative myth, the Arctic refuge “provides habitat to a diverse array of wildlife including millions of migratory birds, caribou, three species of bears (polar, grizzly and black bears), wolves, Dall sheep, muskoxen, arctic and red foxes, wolverines, plus many more.” Drilling the refuge would do nothing for oil prices, do little for the economy outside of oil companies, destroy one of the last uniquely pristine places on this planet, and hasten the catastrophic collapse of our climate system.

Santorum’s fixation with caribou resembles the recent Tea Party fear that Obama is giving manatees dominion over man.

Transcript:

Q: Is there anything off limits? ANWR?

SANTORUM: No, why? Look, we can drill — Come to Pennsylvania. We are drilling oil and gas wells all over the place in people’s backyards. And aside from the fact particularly with the hydrofracking, you’ve got a couple of weeks where there is an intense amount of activity where you frack the stone to release the gas, the rest of the time you have a pump in the ground. And that’s it! It’s not — People live with this and have lived with this for years and years. It’s not a dangerous activity. This not an inherently dangerous activity.

And ANWR. Have any of you been to ANWR, seen pictures of ANWR? People say that Iowa is flat. Iowa’s the Rocky Mountains compared to ANWR. It’s just dead flat. It’s a tundra. It’s frozen ten months out of the year. Nothing lives there. We are drilling oil and gas wells in people’s backyards in Pennsylvania, you know, around children. And that’s okay, but we can’t drill where there is a caribou walking by every other year? It makes no sense at all!

You have a president who’s got — we’ve got an energy crisis and he’s saying a caribou walks by there now and then and you can’t do something that’s good for our country and our economy? That’s region ideology. I don’t know. I just don’t understand how people at this paper or any paper can say that this is a rational policy, that we can sacrifice the economy of this country –

You’re worried about people being uninsured, why don’t you some drilling in Alaska, and make sure they’ve got jobs? You’re worried about the uninsured? I’ll get you insurance. You produce more oil, we’d have a stronger economy, a lot more people would be insured. I would expect that there are some here who say that we can’t do that because of the caribou. But don’t come and talk to me, well, let’s be cutting the uninsured. You cannot have it both ways. You have to look at what’s rational and reasonable. The president is an ideologue! He’s an ideologue who’s driven by a belief that we need to have less. And we need to be, you know — government needs to be rationing these resources.

In 2008, I took a tiny cargo plane to the Inupiaq village of Kivalina, in the northwest of Alaska above the Arctic Circle. I had heard the village would be lost to climate change from erosion, which I imagined to be a slow, gradual, and predictable process.

Touring the island and speaking to residents and government workers, I soon realized the erosion is actually often sudden, severe, and erratic, brought on by increasingly strong storms that threaten the peoples’ safety. Kivalina needs to be relocated. The problem is there is no policy or structure in place to relocate them.

While the continental U.S. shifts between weather extremes - from strong storms fueled by increased precipitation to prolonged droughts aggravated by heat – the changes in the Arctic have been much less ambiguous: steady warming.

Annual mean temperatures in the Arctic region are rising twice as fast as the global average. The warming is melting glaciers, allowing for the absorption of more heat, with recent studies suggesting the possibility of a completely ice-free summer by 2040 or even 2030. Entire ecosystems are transforming, as rising seas pour into freshwater systems, making deltas and lakes more saline and inhospitable for some species, while attracting whole new species.

These changes are also affecting the people of the Arctic, particularly indigenous communities that depend on the land for their daily needs. That land is changing around them, making traveling on ice more dangerous and the migrations of mammals and fish less predictable. The traditional knowledge that has sustained them for millennia is becoming more and more at odds with the transforming landscape.

Some communities are facing the eventual loss of their entire homeland. This includes Kivalina, an Alaska Native village of about 427 people perched on a thin strip of land between the Chukchi Sea and the Kivalina Lagoon.

Residents trace their ancestry to the area back thousands of years, to some of the first migrations into the Americas. The people originally used Kivalina as a seasonal hunting ground but, beginning in 1905, parents were ordered by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs to settle there and enroll their kids in school. In exchange, the people of Kivalina received some small-scale infrastructure, a school, and a medical clinic, and they began making a home for themselves.

Part of this new settlement depended on the formation of sea ice in early fall, hardening the island and buffering it against storms. With warming Arctic temperatures, that ice now forms as late as November or even December, leaving the shoreline exposed and vulnerable for longer periods of time. Lack of ice means the storms are growing stronger as well, as winds are traveling over the open sea for longer periods, building up more energy that is transferred to the water, creating larger waves when they hit the shore.

In 2003, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a 2003 report stating the village needed to be relocated immediately due to storm erosion from climate change, a finding backed by a 2006 Army Corps of Engineers report, which stated that Kivalina would be lost to erosion in 10 to 15 years.

The need to relocate was not news to Kivalina, who had voted to relocate in 1992. The problem? There is no formal relocation policy in place in the U.S., and no government agency tasked with relocation.

Policies around disaster management are primarily structured around helping people strengthen their existing settlements, not move to new ones. Most disaster assistance and funds are available only after a disaster occurs and a disaster declaration is made. This would be too late for a village requiring relocation from steady and sometimes rapid erosion. Disaster mitigation policies, meanwhile, are limited and primarily geared toward strengthening a community within its current area.

Kivalina, however, does not have the option of safely remaining where they are. In 2004, a storm took away a chunk of shoreline, leaving some residents with the sea suddenly at their doorstep. That storm was followed by a series of other storms, swallowing as much as seventy feet of land in one downpour, and forcing the people to build makeshift seawalls out of whatever materials were available. They have had seawalls fail on them, and had to engage in a dangerous evacuation via all-terrain vehicles – dangerous, because there are few places for the people to actually go.

In the meantime, government workers have been doing what they can within their prescribed boundaries. This includes, for example, a more formal rock revetment initiated by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007 to help protect the southern end of the island from destabilizing.

Relocation remains necessary, however, but no agency is authorized to move Kivalina or other Alaska Native villages requiring relocation. This means that piecing together the relocation of the entire community has fallen largely on the people of Kivalina, and has advanced little since they put relocation to a vote nearly two decades ago.

The need for a relocation policy was laid out in a 2009 GAO report, aptly titled, “Alaska Native villages: Limited progress has been made on relocating villages threatened by flooding and erosion.”

In 2008, the native village sued fossil fuel companies for federal public nuisance and their relocation costs. The claim? Kivalina has an identifiable harm, traceable to greenhouse gas emissions, of which the defendant companies are amongst the world’s largest contributors, with a smaller subset like ExxonMobil having actively tried to downplay the severity of climate change and the need for regulations, including both mitigation and adaptation policies. In 2009, a Northern California court dismissed the claim. It is being appealed.

In the meantime, the situation of Kivalina shows it is time to adapt our policies to changing times. The stable climate that federal and state disaster management was built upon is transforming, and nowhere more quickly than in the Arctic. Government workers need to have the flexibility and authority to better assist people requiring relocation. A formal relocation policy and responsible government agency should be put into place. And the people of the Arctic need to be empowered to protect themselves.

Christine Shearer is a postdoctoral scholar in science, technology, and society studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a researcher for CoalSwarm, part of SourceWatch. Her work has appeared in Conservation Letters, the Huffington Post, and Truthout, and she is author of Kivalina: A Climate Change Story (Haymarket Books, 2011).