Kivalina, Alaska, in 2007. The barrier reef Kivalina calls home gets smaller and smaller with every storm. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)
This is what climate change looks like, up
close and personal.
In this town of 403 residents 83 miles above
the Arctic Circle, beaches are disappearing, ice is melting, temperatures are
rising, and the barrier reef Kivalina calls home gets smaller and smaller with
every storm.
There is no space left to build homes for the
living. The dead are now flown to the mainland so the ocean won't encroach upon
their graves. Most here agree that the town should be relocated; where, when
and who will pay for it are the big questions. The Army Corps of Engineers
figures Kivalina will be underwater in the next decade or so.
Because the town's days on the edge of the
Chukchi Sea are numbered, no money has been invested to improve residents'
lives. Eighty percent of the homes do not have toilets. Most rely on homemade
honey buckets — a receptacle lined with a garbage bag topped by a toilet seat.
One of Kivalina's main
roads. The tiny village of 403 residents on the Chukchi Sea lies 83 miles above
the Arctic Circle. (Maria La Ganga / Los Angeles Times)
Residents haul water from tanks in the middle
of town, 25 cents for five gallons. The school is overcrowded. Still, the unpaved
streets here ring with the laughter of children, the buzz of all-terrain
vehicles, the whoosh of the wind.
Earlier this summer, White House advance staff
cased the slender, apostrophe-shaped island to see whether President Obama
could get here during his visit to the Arctic this week — the first by a
sitting White House occupant. At the very least, he is scheduled to visit
Kotzebue, less than 100 miles away, the heart of Alaska's Northwest Arctic
Borough.
Obama has high hopes for addressing climate
change during his remaining time in office. The Alaska trip is part of a global
warming tour. In Washington he will talk environmental issues with Pope Francis
in late September, and in Paris he will attend the United Nations Climate
Change Conference in November.
The Alaska trip is part of an effort to
"speak openly, honestly and frequently about how climate change is already
affecting the lives of Americans and the strength and health of our
economy," senior White House advisor Brian Deese said.
Alaskans, Obama said Saturday in his weekly
address, are already living with climate change's effects: "More frequent
and extensive wildfires. Bigger storm surges as sea ice melts faster. Some of
the swiftest shoreline erosion in the world — in some places, more than 3 feet
a year.
"Alaska's glaciers are melting faster
too," he said, "threatening tourism and adding to rising seas. And if
we do nothing, Alaskan temperatures are projected to rise between six and 12
degrees by the end of the century, changing all sorts of industries
forever."
Millie Hawley,
Kivalina tribal president, in front of the sea wall that village residents hope
can protect them from the Chukchi Sea until plans are made to relocate. (Maria
La Ganga / Los Angeles Times)
Although Obama views this state as the U.S.
poster child for climate change, some Alaskans beg to differ. They are glad the
president agreed to allow limited offshore oil exploration. They want more
access to the vast state's natural resources. And they are wary of a leader who
views their home as a global warming disaster area.
Gov. Bill Walker, who will meet with Obama
during his visit to the Last Frontier, said he wants the president to support a
natural gas pipeline and allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But most of all, the independent governor said
in a news conference Tuesday, he doesn't want the Lower 48 to achieve its
environmental goals on the backs of Alaskans by barring access to natural
resources.
"We probably have the smallest footprint
per capita in the nation, if not the world, on impacting climate change,"
Walker said. "We have some impacts, there's no question, but ... I'm going
to talk a lot about the economic climate change that we're experiencing today.
That's really what my focus is going to be on with the president."
Shelby Adams has a different message for
Obama. That is, if she gets to talk to him when he travels more than 3,600
miles from the Beltway to see the Arctic with his own eyes. Shelby, who just
turned 13, has lived in Kivalina her entire life, and she loves her island home
dearly.
"It's where I grew up, where everybody I
know is," she said five days before Obama was scheduled to land in
Kotzebue. "We need to relocate because the ocean is slowly eating away our
island."
Shelby was in fourth grade when much of
Kivalina was forced to evacuate during a fierce storm in 2011. She and her
family were on one of the few planes that made it to the mainland before flying
conditions became too dangerous. Everyone else sheltered in the school, the
highest point on the nearly flat island.
"We had people sleeping in all the
classrooms and the gym," said Emma Knowles, who was Shelby's teacher at
McQueen School that year. "Someone had gotten a caribou the day before, so
we made a huge pot of caribou stew.... The school didn't even budge. As
dilapidated as it looks, it survived."
Kivalina is no stranger to harsh weather, and
erosion worries have dogged the 27-acre town almost since its inception in
1905. In the 21st century, however, warming temperatures and the perilous
changes that cascade from them have stripped the island of its major source of
protection: ice.
Normally each fall, ice begins hugging the
Kivalina shoreline around the end of October and stays until the end of June.
Even during fierce storms, ice keeps the raging ocean away. But climate change
has caused the ice to appear later and melt earlier, leaving the barrier island
more vulnerable to storm surges.
Thinner ice also makes it harder for the
Inupiat to go whaling. Normally, crews will build camps at the edge of the so-called
shore-fast ice and hunt bowhead and beluga whales as they swim north in spring.
"If the shore-fast ice is thin and weak,
it's not safe to make a camp," said Timothy Schuerch, president of the
Maniilaq Assn., a tribally operated health services organization with clinics
in Kivalina and the other borough villages. "Whaling crews have drifted
out to sea."
The Inupiat who live in Kivalina get most of
their food from the land and sea around them. The increasingly warm weather
means an abundance of cloudberries and low-bush blackberries, said Millie
Hawley, Kivalina tribal president, but it also threatens many of the food
staples on which Alaska natives here depend.
"With the caribou, usually it's like
clockwork," Hawley said. "Every June, we'd hunt. We haven't done that
in years. It's unpredictable. We don't know when we'll see them."
Kivalina residents hang the caribou's
hindquarters outside of their homes to age. The frozen meat is eaten raw,
dipped in seal oil, which is also harvested in June. Trout is eaten the same
way. The Inupiat also depend on seal for meat.
"Usually we get 80 to 100 seals for the
whole community," Hawley said. "This year, we were looking to get
eight. The community now has to go without dried meat and oil."
When their traditional foods become scarce,
island residents must depend on the Kivalina Native Store, the only one in
town. Kivalina is closer to Russia than it is to Anchorage, and nearly all
supplies are shipped here by air. Which accounts for astronomical prices:
A quart of shelf-stable whole milk runs $4.19.
A can of Campbell's tomato soup is $2.95. A 5-pound bag of unbleached,
all-purpose flour is $8.75. A 25.5-ounce bottle of Bertolli extra virgin olive
oil is $23.79.
The store is Kivalina's pride and joy, the
newest building in this wind-battered town. The old store burned down in
December. Its replacement opened in July. It is big, clean, warm and
well-stocked. And it stands out in a town of peeling paint and crowded,
threatened structures, most on short stilts to protect from flooding.
The school, attended by 154 students from
pre-kindergarten through high school, is so jammed that every available space
is used for storage. Hallways, stairwells and classrooms are lined with books
and supplies. A working washing machine stands at the end of one hall.
The main drags, Bering and Channel streets,
are unpaved, their gravel surfaces deeply rutted from the rain and the ATVs
that residents use to get around in summer.
Small houses crowd together; each is home to
extended families, some of up to 17 or so. At least two houses, Hawley said,
are in imminent danger of tumbling into the water. The cemetery lines
Kivalina's slender runway, its crosses visible on takeoff and landing.
Because of erosion, there is almost no room to
build, Hawley said, so "we break every state and federal regulation. The
airport is supposed to be a mile or a mile and a half from the dump. It's 500
feet away."
The fuel tanks that run the power plant were
in danger of falling into the Chukchi Sea, so the town moved them to higher,
safer ground. Fifty feet away is a small cluster of housing for teachers, which
cozies up right next to the school.
When Hawley is asked why her people don't move
— somewhere, anywhere to be safe — she is polite but firm. The land and the
water make the Inupiat who they are. If they moved to Kotzebue, they would be
visitors.
Moving to Anchorage or Fairbanks, she said,
"would be like asking us not to be a people any more."
So what does she want to tell the leader of
the free world when she greets him next week — in Kotzebue, if not Kivalina?
"We are American citizens," she
said, fast and fierce. "We have as much right as all of America to have
access to the resources Washington provides. ... If you are going to provide
millions of dollars to stop hunger in Africa, my people are hungry. Stop hunger
here."
Twitter: @marialaganga
Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli in
Washington contributed to this report.
