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).

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

During questioning by reporters, Murkowski acknowledged she has “long been an advocate for responsible oil and gas development in our state” and that the presentation gave her “more assurances that Shell really is building a response community up in the Arctic.”

This kind of theater is not unusual in a state where oil literally fuels 82 percent of the state’s budget. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t Alaskans who are opposed to drilling in our pristine Arctic Ocean – in fact, those who stand to lose the most, a vocal group of Inupiat people who continue to live off the bounty of Alaska’s Arctic waters in much the same way as generations before them, are the most courageous critics of Alaska’s reliance on oil. It also doesn’t mean that the rest of us don’t have a stake in what happens to a region that is priceless in its beauty and uniqueness – and in the fact that it functions as the world’s air conditioner. As climate change causes Arctic ice to melt at an alarming rate, we can’t afford to hand our Arctic over to oil companies like Shell.

What Murkowski and Shell didn’t say at last week’s press pageantry was that there is no way to effectively clean up a spill in the Arctic’s extreme, remote conditions, as reiterated recently with a comprehensive study by the federal government’s scientific arm. Despite recent technological advances in mechanical recovery for oil spill response, with the Arctic’s extreme weather conditions and broken ice, the amount of oil that could be cleaned up is estimated at a mere 1 to 20 percent, according to the USGS report. Meanwhile, Shell’s oil spill response plan for the Arctic states that the company would be able to clean up 90 percent of the oil in the event of a spill. This from a company that was recently found to own oil rigs in the northern North Sea that caused the majority of 100 potentially lethal spills.

What’s more, Alaska’s Arctic region is so remote – there are no large roads, no hotels, no major airports, no boat docks – that the nearest Coast Guard station — a critical component to any oil spill response — is 1,000 miles away. Even after BP’s disaster in the Gulf, Alaska’s politicians and the oil cheerleaders in Congress continue to push for Arctic drilling. Shell’s plan for the Arctic’s Beaufort Sea could be approved as soon as next month.

That is why a growing coalition of concerned organizations launched a national campaign to protect our one and only Arctic. Over the next year, we will be using a combination of media and grassroots tactics to bring these facts to light. Because once the American public learns that Shell and its cronies in Congress are willing to destroy one of our nation’s greatest natural treasures to further pad their already-bulging pockets, the Obama administration will have no choice but to tell Shell – if you can’t clean up a spill, you can’t drill. We hope you will join us in the Arctic on July 4, 2012 (which also happens to be when Shell hopes to begin drilling) for a celebration of the Alaskan Arctic’s “independence” from Shell.

Sarah Palin at Yankee Seafood Cooperative

When Palin’s One Nation bus tour pulled into New Hampshire yesterday, it came as no surprise that one of her first stops was the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative in Seabrook. New England is home to America’s oldest fishing industry. Many of the region’s fisheries were overfished for decades until recent reductions in catch limits began rebuilding depleted fish populations. While these regulations will allow the fisheries to reverse decades of decline, the short-term economic sacrifices have hit some fishermen hard.

In New Hampshire, which has just 18 miles of coastline, fishermen have felt the pinch, while some of their counterparts in the larger Massachusetts fishing ports of Gloucester and New Bedford or Portland, Maine have thrived. As such, Palin found fertile ground for her anti-government pandering. Palin greeted fishermen by exclaiming “I love your industry!” She tied her visit to one of her major themes, excess government regulation:

“Politics cannot play a part in the fisheries industry,” said Palin, rapping “overly cautious environmental concerns” for strangling the enterprise.

The “overly cautious” regulations Palin attacked are rebuilding fish populations and ensuring that the fisheries reverse decades of decline to once again become growth industries, sustainable for future generations.

Palin has a long track record of politicizing fisheries issues in her Alaskan homeland, to the detriment of both the wildlife and Alaska fishermen:

– Palin consistently opposed allowing native Alaskans to maintain their subsistence fishing rights, choosing instead to back commercial and sportfishing interests.

– Testing the limits of campaign laws, Palin joined mining interests to actively oppose a state ballot measure that would have protected Bristol Bay’s abundant salmon populations from polluted runoff and habitat destruction that would come as a result of opening the Pebble Mine site, thought to contain up to half a trillion dollars of gold, silver, and copper ores.

– Palin attempted to block the endangerment listing of Cook Inlet beluga whales for economic reasons, despite the fact that the Endangered Species Act explicitly excludes consideration of economic factors from decisions about endangerment listings.

For Palin, it seems the only good fish is a dead fish. Honest politics and sound science can give us good fisheries policy. Let’s keep Palin’s political rapping out of the equation.

Seven state legislators who support the federal mandated health insurance have urged me to apply for federal funds to establish a state health insurance exchange in conformance with the new federal health care law. Never mind according to these lawmakers the Florida judge held that health care law unconstitutional and stopped its implementation here. These lawmakers, three of whom are lawyers and know better, urged me to violate – I’m a lawyer to so I’m not going to laugh [crowd laughing]. Huh, I’m a recovering one [crowd laughing]. What these three lawmakers, plus the four others, urged me to violate the court ruling, which is effectively an injunction halting the implementation of the federal health care legislation. I of course will not do so. [...]

The result, Alaska now swims freer of federal entanglement then these other states. These other states are now trying to find out what to do with the oppressive constraints of money taken under a constitutional regime. Next, the supporters of the federal health care law claim, in a letter to me, that the feds will take over implementation of the federal health insurance exchange if I don’t do it. Not true. So long as this court order is in place the federal government is barred from implementing the mandates and the provisions of that federal health care law. That claim is patently false in light of the court ruling. Can the decision be appealed by the federal government? Of course it can. However, at this time, the courts declaratory judgment that the federal health care law is unconstitutional is the law of the land as it applies to Alaska, and 26 other states, by the way. And we will not proceed down an unlawful course to implement it.

It’s difficult to know where to begin, so I’ll start with the most recent events first. Yesterday, the administration filed a motion asking Florida District Court Judge Roger Vinson to clarify the practical impact of his holding, effectively asking for a stay of his decision. “Defendants will appeal both the Court’s judgment and the rulings that underlie it,” the government wrote. “This motion respectfully asks the Court to clarify the scope of its order, in particular that its declaratory judgment does not relieve the parties to this case of any obligations or deny them any rights under the Affordable Care Act while the judgment is the subject of appellate review.” In his ruling, Vinson found that of the 26 states that took part in the lawsuit just two — Utah and Idaho — had standing to challenge the law. That means that the other 24, including Alaska, are on shaky ground if they decide to halt implementation.

From his comments, one would think that Parnell hasn’t applied for any federal dollars that were appropriated through the Affordable Care Act. But Alaska has asked for and received $2.9 million from the ACA. That includes: Medicare improvements for patients and providers, epidemiology labs, strengthening public health infrastructure to improve health outcomes, the maternal and child home visitation program, background checks for long-term care providers, workforce development, and HIV Prevention and Public Health Fund activities. Why those dollars don’t fit under the description of “oppressive constraints of money ” is unclear, as is the question of why Parnell thinks that it is worse to be broke than to receive an enormous pool of money that you are not allowed to spend in frivolous ways.

His claim that the federal government won’t be able to implement a federal exchange is also misguided. As the law states, if a state “will not have any required Exchange operational by January 1, 2014,” “the Secretary shall (directly or through agreement with a not- for-profit entity) establish and operate such Exchange within the State and the Secretary shall take such actions as are necessary to implement such other requirements.” Of course, if a formal stay is granted, then the government can proceed implementing this portion of the law.

Parnell, who sought the advice of his attorney general amid concerns implementing the law would violate his oath of office, told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce the state would pursue lawful, market-based solutions to making insurance affordable and accessible to Alaskans.

He said the Florida judge’s ruling is the law of the land, as it pertains to Alaska, barring implementation of the federal law here. He said the state will pursue options of its own instead.

Failing to implement the law or establish an exchange would require the federal government to step in and offer Alaskans coverage through a federal-based insurance exchange. Funding for a federal exchange — which will cost $235.9 million — is part of the administration’s FY 2012 budget request.

Parnell is the only anti-reform governor who is using his opposition to the Affordable Care Act to prevent his state from applying for federal grants to help regulators police unreasonable insurance health premiums, plan for the exchanges, and most other grants (Alaskan businesses and seniors are taking advantage of the law, however). A number of the other 25 states that are part of the multi-state challenge have sent back a portion of the federal grants, but all have accepted a far greater portion of the early benefits of reform.

Alaska, meanwhile, is suffering from a fairly severe health care crisis and would stand to benefit from the aforementioned grants to employers and regulators. Nineteen percent of Alaskans and 12 percent of children are without insurance coverage and the state’s health care costs tend to grow faster than the national average.

As many of us have been saying for years, more resources and research are needed for Arctic development as warming temperatures make far north resources more accessible.

“Producing the enormous energy resources available within our borders is vital for our economic and national security, but we must develop these resources in a safe and environmentally responsible manner,” Begich continued.

Like the rest of the nation, the future of Alaska is already unsafe because of global warming, as Begich himself has explained. “We are feeling its near-term effects far more than the residents of any other state,” wrote Begich in a March 2010 letter, “including retreating sea ice, rapidly eroding shorelines, thawing permafrost, ocean acidification, and changing fish and wildlife migration patterns.” Since then, the world has continued to rapidly heat up, making 2010 the warmest year on record. National security experts are worried about global warming pollution’s impact on everything from spread of disease to displaced people.

The now-melting Arctic permafrost contains over 1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as now contained in the atmosphere. The warming Arctic Ocean similarly contains vast reserves of methane. If the thaw continues and creates a feedback loop of Arctic greenhouse emissions, unimaginable global catastrophe will ensue. Apparently without irony, Begich proposes to accelerate that process by further extracting fossil fuels that are buried below the ocean floor, in the name of “economic and national security.”

The Wonk Room contacted Begich’s office to ascertain what the senator believes is a “safe and environmentally responsible manner” to extract fossil fuels made available by global warming, but has not yet received a response.

Beginning with an open enrollment period in 2013, Exchanges will help individuals and small employers shop for, select, and enroll in high-quality, affordable private health plans that fit their needs at competitive prices. Exchanges will assist eligible individuals to receive premium tax credits or coverage through other Federal or State health care programs. By providing one-stop shopping, Exchanges will make purchasing health insurance easier and more understandable.

States have a lot of discretion in how the construct their exchanges and the federal government has already issued its first batch of planning grants to help states build their unique market places. More funds will be available next year, once state legislatures across the country pass legislation establishing the exchanges. But the two states that did not apply for the funds in protest of health reform — Minnesota and Alaska — may have a hard time receiving new dollars, the guidance suggests:

Forty-eight States and the District of Columbia were awarded their first Exchange grants under Section 1311 in September 2010. Those grants were for planning purposes and the next round of grants will be for the purpose of establishing an Exchange. The opportunity to apply for grants will be announced in February 2011 and will become available on a rolling basis throughout the next three years. States will have to meet certain milestones in order to be awarded grants in 2011, and the size of State awards may be related to the number of milestones met. States that are not able to meet required milestones by spring 2011 may apply for grants later in the year. Necessary Exchange costs will be fully funded by HHS until 2015. After January 1, 2015, Exchanges must be self funded.

The problem is, Minnesota and Alaska would have to meet certain benchmarks without federal assistance in order to receive new funding. Should they fail to do this and find themselves unable to construct their own exchanges, “now or at a later point in the process,” “HHS will work with the State to establish an Exchange,” the guidance reads.

The federal government may not be exactly taking over, but ironically by resisting planning grants these Govs. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and Sean Parnell (R-AK) may be ceding at least some control to the federal government, bringing about the very kind of “government takeover” that they have been protesting by resisting these funds in the first place.