With focus on hurricanes, erosion-threatened Alaska villages wonder if they’ll get any help from Trump
But the government hasn't provided the same assistance to endangered
Former President
"She said it time and again, about climate change, the effects," said
"She had a position about all of this," Cadiente said.
The federal whistleblower,
But President
Clement subsequently published an opinion piece in The
Clement said in a phone interview with
"It's a matter of momentum, and the important thing was that finally, after too long, the momentum was building," Clement said. "This administration has halted that momentum and reversed progress."
But the bureaucrats and experts in
That kind of cash never materialized during Obama's presidency, even after he visited
"There just can't be the expectation that they're going to come in and move them -- I mean, this isn't Soviet Russia," Holen said. "Ultimately, it's going to be up to the communities to move."
As advocates and experts like Holen ponder alternative sources of cash for village relocations, like Native corporations and philanthropists, they're also reporting something surprising: Lower-level federal agency employees are still cooperating with them -- even under Trump, who's dismissed global warming as a hoax and promised to withdraw from the
"Every single thing I was working on before is still going on," said one of those advocates,
'Positive engagement'
Several of Trump's initial moves after his election took aim at federal programs and initiatives that work on
Among them was his revocation of an Obama executive order establishing a
Trump's initial budget proposed to shut down Sea Grant, a federal coastal research program of the
The budget also would have shuttered the
But six months after Trump proposed to eliminate the commission, it's still running, and so is Sea Grant.
The commission's head,
In an interview at the commission's downtown
Those comments, Neimeyer said, suggest that there's potential to cooperate with Trump's appointees on village relocation and adapting to climate change impacts.
"We've seen no evidence of the new administration opposing this work," Neimeyer said. "We're seeing very positive engagement."
More than a 'little bit of attention'
Clement, the whistleblower, doesn't dispute that career employees at federal agencies are still functioning under the status quo.
The problem now, he said, is that unlike during Obama's second term, there's no one in
There's no dedicated stream of federal cash large enough to pay a village's full relocation costs, or their costs of protecting existing roads and buildings from climate impacts. Instead, they have to apply for individual grants from agencies like the
"This is not the kind of issue where you can just pay a little bit of attention and see if you can redirect a million dollars," Clement said. "Federal agencies are not empowered to move resources until D.C. gets behind it."
One member of
Even after Obama's visit to the state, the
"The grand announcements of the last administration were little more than empty promises that resulted in little or no worthwhile action," said the statement from Sullivan's spokesman,
Some advocates suggest that the federal government does have a responsibility to help relocate erosion-threatened coastal villages because of its role in creating them. Many were originally established as the government pushed policies that required children to attend school, said Holen, the UAF professor.
The attorney for the
That was Trump's way of saying that the federal government, under his leadership, would focus its attention on domestic problems rather than global ones, and cut off its payments of hundreds of millions of dollars into an international "
"If the president meant what he said -- that he wanted to put America first and Americans first -- there's no better Americans than the first Americans," Walleri said. "In this case:
But in a brief interview last month, a top
DeVito was in
In the interview, DeVito wouldn't identify specific federal efforts to directly support village relocation. But he did say that the
"Any increased revenue into the federal government from our strategies do have a benefit to address all environmental issues," said DeVito, Zinke's counselor for energy policy.
Other Alaskans working to relocate and protect coastal villages argued that it's not realistic to expect a big commitment of federal cash any time soon -- or state cash, given
Cox, the state planner, said she thinks philanthropic organizations could be the most promising source of money. Holen, the university professor, suggested that Alaska Native corporations could help fill gaps.
"Corporations are supposed to benefit their shareholders and I think some of the onus on moving some of the communities may have to go to them," he said. "It's going to have to be a team effort."
But even if villages come up with the money to pay for relocation and protection,
The administration's refusal to acknowledge the link between global warming and the burning of fossil fuels, in spite of a broad scientific consensus, is "spectacularly irresponsible," said
For the Trump administration to acknowledge the impacts of climate change without addressing its cause, Steiner added, is like "trying to bail a sinking ship with a teaspoon."
"Adaptation is just going to buy you a little bit of time," he said.
Asked if he was concerned that the Trump administration's plans to boost the production of fossil fuels could worsen the climate change impacts that are threatening
"We're all environmentalists. We're all conservationists," he said. "And those folks, including Native Alaskans, have no better friend in
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