Addressing the Impacts of Global Warming on Alaska’s Communities and Ecosystems

Global warming is devastating ecosystems in Alaska. The Arctic is experiencing warming at a rate much greater than the rest of the country. Coastal communities are eroding into the sea. Animals are changing their seasonal behaviors in ways that make subsistence hunting more challenging. Forest fires are intensifying, bark beetle infestations are devastating forests in Southcentral Alaska, and melting permafrost, which the military used as a storage mechanism to dispose of toxic wastes, is releasing that waste into water sources and wildlife habitats.

The irony of global warming is ever present in Alaska. While Alaska continues to suffer dramatically from impacts of global warming, there is renewed interest in developing its vast fossil fuel reserves. Alaska contains over 40% of the nation’s coal, some of which is already being exported to South American and Asian nations. If developed, new coal mines in Alaska would increase worldwide fossil fuel consumption and contribute unimaginable quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere, virtually dooming any efforts to control climate change.

Over the last year, Trustees for Alaska launched a major initiative to travel to remote villages whose subsistence cultures are endangered by climate change. We focused on two villages, Point Hope and Point Lay, whose plight is representative of the challenges facing rural Alaska. These traditional Inupiat villages on the shore of the Chukchi Sea rely heavily on subsistence food sources, including caribou, marine mammals, and fish that have been impacted by environmental threats linked to global warming and energy development activities.