An Alaskan village is falling into the sea. Washington is looking the other way.
The sun never really sets on summer nights in the far north, and the endless twilight makes Shishmaref, Alaska, something of a kids’ paradise.
“There's a lot of kids,” says 8-year-old Walter Nayokpuk, emerging from a swirling kid mosh pit in a wide spot of sand between some houses. “And we can be free!”
Free to roam in this Iñupiat village of about 600 people on a barrier island near the Bering Strait, just shy of the Arctic Circle.
There's a church, a school, two stores and around 150 houses. For kids, it is a very safe place to play, and grow up.
But the paradox of Shishmaref is that it might be both one of the safest and one of the most dangerous places to live in America today: This small community is ground zero for climate change in the Arctic.
Shishmaref is the only town on Sarichef Island. And everywhere you go, you can see the waves and hear the constant roar of the ocean. The island is only about a quarter of a mile wide and it's getting smaller.
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At the Department of the Interior, Clement set out to get federal agencies to help protect people in coastal Alaska from the threats of rapid climate change. Shishmaref and other towns were already engaged in planning their own solutions, but the sticking point was money — moving a whole town is a complicated and expensive affair. One federal study pegged the cost of moving Shishmaref at $179 million.
Shishmaref doesn't have that kind of money. They barely have any kind of money. Forty percent of people here live below the poverty line and many homes don’t even have running water.
But Congress was not supportive of helping with the move. Many members weren’t — and still aren’t — willing to accept that human-caused climate change is even real.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/an-alaskan-village-is-falling-into-the-sea-washington-is-looking-the-other-way/ar-BBOJxs5?li=BBnb7Kz
Of course not. Those are brown people.
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