The moment that was almost here.

October 24, 2024 9:00 AM

A storm surge on Tuesday has flooded the coastal town of Kotzebue in Alaska. Dr Kat Napaaqtuk has gathered some photos and videos to show the dramatic impact on local homes, including her father's house in 2022 and yesterday. Kotzebue, as Napaaqtuk writes, "is at sea level. It's surrounded by water on 3 sides." In the Arctic, that puts it on the front line of climate change and sea level rise.

In 2015, Barack Obama became the first sitting US President to travel north of the Arctic Circle when he gave a speech at Kotzebue. The local official welcoming the president said in her introduction that "my current home may not exist ten years from now". Obama, in his speech, said:

When it comes to climate change, there is such a thing as being too late. The effects can be irreversible if we don’t act. And that moment is almost here. And you know this better than anybody. I want you to know, as your President, I’m here to make sure that you get the support that you need. But we should be optimistic about what can be accomplished, because there’s nothing that we can’t do if we work together.

posted by rory (8 comments total)

Is this the place where the local tribe requested support from the UN human rights commission, regarding forced displacement by the United States due to climate negligence?
posted by eustatic at 9:45 AM on October 24

The moment is here. But hey, even if we can't work together, we can still be optimistic!
posted by BlueHorse at 10:01 AM on October 24

eustatic, I think that was the people of Tok (now Newtok and sinking again.) I could be wrong though.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:18 AM on October 24

My mistake, looks like it was Kivalina. (et al with tribes from Lousiana.) Good luck to them.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:21 AM on October 24

Ooh I really got my facts wrong on Tok. Don't listen to me. I'll stop commenting.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:30 AM on October 24

That's weird, as there was widespread coastal flooding along China's eastern seaboard in the last 40 hours. There's almost no reporting on it. But so many places in the world where the politicians have turned their backs to the water.
posted by unearthed at 11:33 AM on October 24

I wish I had some sort of optimistic answer to the challenges facing the people of Kotzebue, but nobody does. Further sea-level rise is baked in whatever happens to emissions, so places at sea level like in coastal Alaska, the Maldives, a lot of Pacific microstates, are screwed. London and the Netherlands might stick around a while because their rich countries can throw money at the problem of building dikes and barriers, but even that will only buy them, what, a century? If that.

But we can bear witness and mourn the losses, and hold them up against the denialists who still somehow pretend everything's fine. We had a hurricane sweep across Florida the wrong way this month and a whole heap of people would rather believe it was a deliberate act of geoengineering beyond the capabilities of anyone on earth than the natural progression of trends that scientists have been predicting and the climate has been closely tracking for decades.
posted by rory at 2:34 PM on October 24 [2 favorites]

A couple of bonus bits of context that may be helpful for people who are not accustomed to thinking in terms of Alaska's geographical challenges..

1. While Kotzebue is a community that would be considered quite small in most places, by Alaskan standards it is a major regional hub. Its motto of "Gateway to the Arctic" is maybe a slightly over-broad claim but not hugely so. Beyond its existence as a community in its own right, Kotzebue also serves as a vital commercial and transportation hub for a host of tiny outlying communities as well as the only likely access to services such as medical treatment.
2. If you're not familiar with life in that part of the world it might seem, when you look at a map, as though the obvious solution is to relocate a bit further from the water and rebuild such communities as have a reason to continue. But there are no roads in that part of the world - the realities of tundra in fact make it hugely difficult to build and maintain persistent overland travel routes. Waterways are the practical traffic corridors and Kotzebue is important largely because of its location near the mouth of three major rivers. Proximity to major waterways is a critical part of its reason to exist, not only for commerce but also for access to subsistence food resources on which many of its residents depend.

posted by Nerd of the North at 2:57 PM on October 24 [10 favorites]