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Threatened By Sinking Land Not Rising Seas, Alaska Village Decides To Relocate

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A picture is worth a thousand words.

What kind of idiot would build a house that close to the fucking 
ocean?

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/08/18/ap_061218029751_custo
m-c1484b225884e655fdfac167dc6e7d6350803e3d-s800-c85.jpg

Rising sea levels have eroded an Inupiat Eskimo village for 
decades. Now, residents of Shishmaref, Alaska, have officially 
voted to relocate.

The island community, located near the Bering Strait, opted to 
move rather than remain in place with added safety measures to 
protect against the rising waters. The city clerk's office told 
NPR that 94 votes favored relocating and 78 votes wanted to 
protect in place.

Now, according to the clerk's office, the city council will meet 
to discuss the options for where to relocate. A recent 
feasibility study assessed four possible sites, and the clerk 
says those options have been narrowed down to two.

Esau Sinnok, an Arctic Youth ambassador from Shishmaref, wrote 
in a recent blog post that the community has "lost 2,500 to 
3,000 feet of land to coastal erosion" over the past 35 years. 
He said his family has moved 13 houses in 15 years, "from one 
end of the island to the other because of this loss of land."

On All Things Considered, Sinnok explained that he supports 
relocating the village "so we'll have a community called 
Shishmaref for future generations." Here's more:

"Shishmaref will be underwater within the next three decades, 
and if we do not do anything, we'll be forced to move to another 
city like Nome or Kotzebue or Fairbanks or Anchorage, and not 
many people will move to the same place. So that means our 
unique community of Shishmaref will soon die out because we have 
our unique dialect of Inupiat Eskimo language, our unique Eskimo 
dancing, our unique gospel singing translated in Inupiat. All 
that will soon die out if we do not move as a community."
It's a community that relies on hunting and fishing, he said. "A 
majority of our diet comes from the land and the sea. We hunt 
for caribou, moose, musk ox, bearded seal, walrus and gather 
traditional berries like the cloud berry, blueberries, 
blackberries."

Tribal coordinator Jane Stevenson recently told The Associated 
Press that "she is leaning toward remaining at the current site 
because it's closer to subsistence foods such as fish seal and 
walrus that people rely on for much of their diet."

Sinnok said that some of those who want to stay belong to an 
older generation, who say "they want to stay in place because 
they've lived there all their lives and that's where their 
parents and grandparents grew up too."

The town's mayor, Howard Weyiouanna, also argued that staying at 
the current location would be the most cost-effective, according 
to the AP. As the wire service reported, "either scenario 
selected in the Aug. 16 vote would cost millions — money the 
community of nearly 600 doesn't have."

Shishmaref is one of at least 31 Alaska Native villages where 
erosion due to climate change poses an imminent threat, 
according to a 2009 report from the Government Accountability 
Office. Twelve of those villages were exploring relocation 
options.

According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, "scientists 
attribute coastal erosion in Shishmaref to global warming that 
has thawed sea ice that once shielded the island from storm 
surges." It added that the village's "permafrost, the layer of 
permanently frozen soil on which it is built, is melting as 
well."

This is not the first time the community has voted on whether to 
relocate — Shishmaref voters decided to relocate in a 2002 poll, 
but that never happened owing to lack of resources. But Sinnock 
told NPR that he thinks such a decision would be handled 
differently now:

"I think that we learned a lot more than we did 14 years ago. I 
think the momentum we have now will lead to finding the 
available resources, and I really hope that this story, our 
story, goes out to the federal government, like to President 
Barack Obama, so that they can really know what effects of 
climate change are in Alaska."
He added: "It's crazy to know that your only home will soon be 
underwater if the federal government doesn't do anything to help 
you out."

It's not the government's job to tell you that you have to 
fucking move you dumbass.
 

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Threatened By Sinking Land Not Rising Seas, Alaska Village Decides To Relocate "Duh Clinton Duh" <hillary-sucks@dnc.org> - 2016-08-22 13:13 +0000

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