The Long Emergency: Baked Alaska

As has been widely reported, Anchorage had the hottest temperature ever recorded on July 4, 90 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not quite as warm now but they have another problem, wild fires. The long-range forecast is nothing but smoke.



The consequences of cliimate change for Alaska are catastrophic. Many indigenous villages have already had to be abandoned as the sea ice disappears and the land erodes away.

“Especially in western Alaska, we’re going to see ground thawed that has not been thawed since before the last ice age,” [climate specialist Rich Thoman] explained.
The thawing of frozen earth will challenge human infrastructure and communities, for sure, but it will also unfreeze ancient germs and release huge amounts of greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide and methane–that have been held in frozen soil for all of human existence. These greenhouse gases will, in turn, drive further warming.
What this thawing illustrates most, said Thoman, “at the most visceral level, is the magnitude of what’s happened in the last 150 years.”

So what is the Alaskan government doing about it? Well, it turns out the recent gubernatorial election was all about whether Alaskans will each get $1,600 a year in free money from oil and gas royalties, as they have been lately, or whether they would get $3,000. The Republican candidate, natch, ran on the $3,000 promise and he won. Unfortunately, that meant he had to eliminate 40% of the state allocation to the University of Alaska, " make a $50 million cut to state Medicaid spending and tens of millions more in reductions for senior benefits and public assistance to the blind and disabled. Dunleavy even cut $3.4 million for inspectors who monitor cruise ship pollution — money that was funded through fees from passengers and the cruise lines, not state tax dollars."

Since the most important thing to the people of Alaska is to get that free $3,000 every year, the last thing on earth they would ever want is to stop burning fossil fuel. The $3,000 is more important to them than educating their children, taking care of their sick and old people, or stopping cruise ships from polluting their harbors, so obviously it's more important to them than stopping their state from burning up and blowing away.

There is no limit to the depth of human folly.