I bring stories from the community into the KTOO newsroom so that all of our reporting matters. I want to hear my community’s struggles and its wins reflected in our coverage. Does our reporting reflect your experience in Juneau?
For years, Alaska fishermen have worried that climate change would threaten their livelihoods. And now, it has. In late 2013, a strikingly warm mass of water arrived in the Gulf of Alaska and stayed for three years. Scientists called it “the blob.” Fishermen started to notice a drastic drop in the population of cod — an unassuming fish that’s been an economic powerhouse for the community of Kodiak. As fishermen struggle to adjust to the lowest cod numbers on record, scientists are asking if it’s a preview of what’s to come as the ocean warms.
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As chair of the Senate Energy Committee, Lisa Murkowski has a significant role in shaping national energy policy. She, more than most Alaskans, sees how climate change could devastate her state. But on climate change, and so many other things, Senator Murkowski finds herself in the middle.
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Which side is Lisa Murkowski on? Alaska’s senior senator faces an impossible balancing act: How to reconcile her state’s dependence on the oil industry with the fact that Alaska is extremely vulnerable to climate change. She says we need to reduce carbon emissions but remains an ardent advocate for more oil production. She straddles both sides of the debate. But in her straddling, she also represents us all: how do we come to terms with our dependence on the very products that are threatening the globe?
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The Alaska Native village of Newtok is disappearing. It’s rapidly losing ground to a combination of thawing permafrost and coastal erosion and residents worry their traditional way of life could disappear with the land. Newtok’s residents are some of the first Americans to face this problem, but they won’t be the last. And their predicament raises the question: What do we owe communities in the path of climate change?
To hear this and other episodes of the Big Thaw, subscribe to Midnight Oil on iTunes, NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.
The village of Newtok, in Western Alaska, is about to disappear. The land it was built on is eroding away, threatening not just the village, but a way of life. Subscribe to Midnight Oil: The Big Thaw to hear Episode 1: The Village.
