Category: Uncategorized

As a pragmatist, despite profound relief after Joe Biden’s win, I don’t imagine four short years of rational leadership will undo all the environmental damage inflicted by the Trump administration. But here’s my wish list for Biden’s first 100 days.

 

Goal one: Rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. Biden has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement on Day 1 of his presidency. Apparently, this only requires a letter to the UN to take effect and would recast the U.S. to, once again, take a leading role in reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. Unfortunately, there’s no making up for lost time.  At 417.16 ppm in May of this year, up from an annual peak of 407.70 in May of 2016, the CO2 genie is out of the bottle.

 

Goal two: Work some bipartisanship magic and move a COVID-19 relief package through the House and Senate with green energy funding for states and local governments.  This legislation should stimulate green infrastructure research and development and fund job training, especially in regions hardest hit economically by COVID-19 like Alaska, where 37,600 individuals lost their jobs as the hospitality and fossil fuel industries took a hit. This funding could employ local contractors in weatherizing state and municipal buildings, installing solar panels, wind turbines, and heat pumps, and setting up recharge stations in and between Alaska’s cities for electric vehicles.

 

Biden’s “Build Back Better” economic plan includes a 2-trillion-dollar budget over the next four years to address fossil fuel emissions and ramp up a conversion to clean energy while addressing America’s aging infrastructure. In the process he plans to create millions of new jobs in the automobile, transportation, power, and housing sectors. If he succeeds, the plan will move our nation closer to Biden’s goal of 100 percent clean energy by 2050. How would he pay for this, you ask? By repealing Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 for the country’s wealthiest ten-percent, projected to drain 1.9-trillion-dollars from the treasury over a ten-year period.

 

While he’s at it, Biden could extend the soon-to-expire Investment Tax Credit for the new installation of residential and commercial solar energy systems.

 

Goal three: Use emergency authority to rewrite drilling and land management plans which redirect BLM staff away from leasing and permitting new oil and gas leases on federal lands, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This isn’t an all-out ban, but would avoid lengthy and contentious congressional and legal battles. He could, apparently, sign an outright ban on offshore drilling in federal waters, which accounts for about 16% of total oil production.

 

Goal four: Use his executive powers (newly expanded under the Trump administration) to put the teeth back into the NEPA process by bringing back independent (rather than industry-based) environmental analysis, requiring assessment and consideration of cumulative effects (like climate change and water resources), and an easier process for meaningful public input. Better yet, protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sensitive areas in the National Petroleum Reserve, like Teshekpuk Lake (critical to vast flocks of migrating waterfowl,) and cultural resources like Bear’s Ears National Monument, through legislation that safeguards them from oil and gas exploration and extraction in perpetuity.

 

Goal five: Reverse Trump’s recent order to lift the roadless rule in Alaska’s Tonga’s National Forest, opening up 9.4 million acres to road building and logging. Instead of building a maze of new roads to cut old-growth stands of red and yellow cedar, Sitka spruce and hemlock, work with Native Alaskans and the USFS in a compromise to identify low-impact regions within roaded areas where selective cutting would not result in mudslides and damage to salmon streams and could be done without an offset of millions of taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of road construction.

 

Goal six: Weigh in on new national Arctic strategies with the Arctic Council with a focus on sustainable economic development and strengthen international collaboration.

 

Over the past four years, while Trump disregarded and disemboweled climate science in the US, the scientific world has moved on without us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the far north. As temperatures in the Arctic and subarctic continue to increase at twice the global rate, whole ecosystems are shifting, impacting wildlife, indigenous peoples, and opening up new economic opportunities hand-in-glove with potential hazards. The United States should be at the table, or on the ice, alongside our international colleagues.

 

Let me close by saying, when I feel discouraged by the assault we’ve suffered over the past four years, like a hundred razor-sharp cuts to our environment and our democracy, I remind myself of the nation-wide March for Science, the global Student Strike for Climate, and the vast swell of support (FINALLY) for addressing climate change as a key issue in the 2020 Democratic race, and I find courage. We’re in for a fight, but we’re woke, and we’re ready.

 

 

 

In an attempt to keep up with the times and create an opportunity for other folks to contribute their ideas and insights on and about Alaska, this will be our last issue of the Water Policy Consulting Newsletter. Instead, staring the first of January, we will shift our energies to a new blog under the name of Boreal Observer. This will allow us to expand our audience and speak out more directly about issues facing Alaska. As always, our focus will include the evolving climate crisis, timber and mining issues, water rights, and litigation. Additionally, we will add a focus on community and environmental resilience and appreciation of this, our last great wilderness.  You can find us at https://borealobserver.com

 

If you, or someone you know, is interested in sharing essays or photos about their observations and experiences in Alaska, please contact us for more information about submissions.

 

 

In an effort to hold oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before President Trump leaves office on January 20^th, the Bureau of Land Management has issued a call for nominations. The timing is tight. A 30-day call for submissions will end December 17^th followed by a 30-day notice prior to final lease sales. With 1.6 million acres of caribou and polar bear habitat at stake, conservative groups around the country, along with the Gwich’in Steering Committee, are suing the Trump administration over violations to the Endangered Species Act, a flawed environmental impact statement, and the foreshortened two-week public comment period (which ended on November 6^th) following the initial announcement of the plan.

 

Despite the last-minute opportunity for lease sales, bidders may be hesitant, given President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory. Biden is adamantly opposed to opening the refuge and has vowed to use the powers at his disposal, be it a congressional bill or an executive decision, to thwart oil and gas lease sales on the Arctic Plane. Couple that with a growing list of major banks unwilling to lend capitol to developers eyeing the Refuge, ferocious legal opposition from numerous environmental and Native challengers, and continued low oil prices, there’s good reason to hope that Big Oil will leave well enough alone.

 

The Bureau of Land Management gave their Record of Decision go-ahead for the Willow Master Development Plan, paving the way for ConocoPhillips to tap the projected 590-million-barrel reserve on the eastern edge of the National Petroleum Reserve. While Alaskan delegates may cheer the news, environmental groups see it as yet another failure of the State and Federal governments to scale down oil production in favor of carbon-neutral technology. Read more.

Once again, the Trump administration is embroiled in a lawsuit, this time with Tanana Chiefs Conference, over a “rushed, flawed, premature, and inadequate” environmental impact statement related to the proposed Ambler Road Project.  The Tanana Chiefs Conference, plus a number of other independent Athabascan and Inupiat villages, have filed suit to halt the 211-mile industrial road.  The road will open up access through the foothills of the Brooks Range to copper deposits on Bureau of Land Management lands. According to the lawsuit, “Mining operations are anticipated to sprawl out in every direction from the road corridor passing directly through and between several National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and other conservation system units, thus piercing the heart of one of the most spectacular and sensitive regions of Interior Alaska.”

House Democrats are writing a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that would fund everything from education to rural broadband to clean water, with an eye toward charting the path toward a green recovery from the pandemic. POLITICO’s Kathryn A. Wolfe reports that Democrats appear to be building from the $494 billion transportation bill making its way through the chamber and hope to have a full package passed before the July 4 recess. It also will include $70 billion for “clean energy,” $25 billion for drinking water programs, $35 billion for health care infrastructure and $100 billion for broadband, House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) told reporters. The legislation is also expected to contain $1 billion for climate resiliency upgrades to public housing, among other programs in that area.

The bill is likely to encounter resistance from the President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans, as past Democratic proposals have. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi projected optimism at a press conference Thursday. “When people see the legislation, and people see how it does affect their areas — this is not just a matter of transportation, it’s a matter of clean air, clean water,” Pelosi said. “So, we think that this will be nonpartisan, very bipartisan, and we look forward to working together — House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and the White House.”