olitical progress has come only on the flanks. In 2004, the Alaska legislature approved a bill to prepare for a potential cap-and-trade system like McCain-Lieberman, making use of the state's depleted oil fields and forests to store carbon. But Ethan Berkowitz, the Democratic minority leader of the Alaska House, says he won support only by downplaying the climate-change benefits of the bill, promising instead that a carbon-trading market could give the state a new $100-million-a-year industry. Berkowitz says the bill's environmental positives were political negatives in the Alaska legislature.
"There is no such thing as an environmentalist in Alaska; there are only extreme environmentalists. And they want to take jobs. That's the political syllogism we've gotten into," Berkowitz says. "If the environmentalists are for it, there's a knee-jerk response against it."
That political dynamic intimidates those who might speak up. Deborah Williams is a pillar of Alaska's environmental community -- she is the executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation and was a special assistant for Alaska issues to Bruce Babbitt, President Clinton's secretary of the interior. But when former senator Frank Murkowski ran successfully for governor in 2002, ads broadcast on his behalf pilloried Williams by name as an "enemy of Alaska" who supported his opponent, the then lieutenant governor, Fran Ulmer.
"There is fear about being the messenger," Williams says. But that's not the only reason Alaskans aren't ready to act. "The climate has changed much faster than people can absorb," she says. "There are both psychological and political reasons to be in denial."
Alaska's outdoors-oriented culture relies on its cold winters for skiing, snowmobiling, and dog mushing. Even politically conservative urban hunters have been shocked to find backcountry routes blocked by open water in midwinter. Yet while this reliance makes change easier to perceive, it also makes it harder to accept. As when grieving for a loved one who has died, a lengthy stage of denial may be inevitable.
Even though I've written a book about climate change in Alaska, I still have trouble accepting in my heart what my head already knows. As an avid Nordic skier, I can't stand the idea that my children won't be able to swoosh through the crispness of a winter day in the boreal forest that lies within Anchorage's city limits, or that the reliably long, cold winters of my childhood are probably gone forever.
But over the last few years, as deteriorating winters and warmer summers have become pronounced, I have detected the first stirrings of a psychological shift. You used to hear jokes about a group called Alaskans for Global Warming; after a long winter, it's hard to campaign against warm spring days. But now that joke falls flat -- I saw it happen among a group of businesspeople chatting about the weather before a breakfast meeting. No one laughed. Faces darkened.
If businesspeople feel this dread, imagine how it feels to indigenous Alaskans whose livelihoods and cultures depend on the natural world. Arctic cultures survived for millennia using the knowledge they passed down through generations. Hunters must understand the sea ice, the tundra, and the wildlife to interpret subtle messages that are critical to success and safety. Will the ice hold? When will animals return? Is it safe to travel or should hunters stay home? Elders answered these questions, and younger hunters learned from them how to read the environment. Suddenly, the elders' knowledge is becoming irrelevant because the world they understand is disappearing. Such a deep loss takes time to accept.
There is a hill on St. Lawrence Island that Siberian Yupik villagers traditionally climbed in the fall to issue a call to the sea ice, which would then form as the solid ground of their wintertime hunting for marine mammals. But the ice no longer answers the call, sometimes for the length of the winter. Vast areas of open water extend across the northern Bering Sea, which once was reliably solid from fall to spring.
Under the old climate regime, sea ice settled the waves. The St. Lawrence islanders' light, flexible skin boats were perfectly suited for dragging across the ice and launching in the narrow leads of water where they hunted. These boats don't work so well in the big waves that now build up in open seas.
On April 27, a whaling crew's skin boat from the St. Lawrence village of Gambell capsized in eight-foot waves. Four died, including two children and the village's mayor. Likely, these were victims of the changing climate. But the villagers are consumed by grief now, not by McCain-Lieberman.
The unanswered question for Alaskans, and perhaps for all of us, is this: When will the grieving, or the denial, give way to action?
