U.S. Department of the Interior
Growing up in the barrier island Shishmaref, Alaska, and despite only being 19 years old, I’ve experienced the effects of climate change up close, witnessing the devastating impacts it will eventually level across the world.
Earlier this year, my community of Shishmaref voted to relocate due to the threats climate change poses to our homes. In my lifetime alone, Shishmaref has lost about 100 feet of land--and this is in addition to the 2,000 feet that has disappeared over the past 50 years. Soon, the place our entire community calls home will be underwater due to rising sea level caused by climate change.
This is why I was so excited when I heard President Obama had called for the Arctic and Atlantic oceans to be removed from the five year offshore drilling plan. Drilling offshore makes climate change effects more disastrous, more devastating, and more threatening to Shishmaref, to 231 communities across Alaska, and the world. Our home will probably be gone a lot sooner if offshore drilling happens - if drilling anywhere happens. Now, I’m encouraging the President to make his work permanent and protect our waters from ever being destroyed by fossil fuel operations.
Permitting oil operations in our ocean carries far more consequences than most realize. Drilling would threaten our oceans, our climate, and our communities, but it would also continue to change the migration patterns of our walrus, seals, and whales; the pattern that they've been migrating for time immemorial. Animals have to go a lot farther out in the ocean, and that means as they go farther out we’d have to go farther out just to hunt for them. That’s a really big struggle. We are already unable to hunt the way we have for thousands of years. It all goes back to what the effects of drilling are -- the thin ice. We aren’t able to reach the animals we rely on for survival because the ice is so thin we can’t get to them.
That’s why it’s not just about stopping offshore drilling in the Arctic, but stopping it everywhere -- including in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve met with people from there, they are experiencing the same effects as us, just in a different location. Climate change and drilling affect all of us, no matter where we are. We must end the drilling in the Gulf, and block it in the Arctic.
I am determined to continue speaking up for my community and the youth of Alaska. No matter where we are, young people can and will work to change things. I’ve met a lot of other young influential leaders across Alaska whose homes and communities are being affected by climate change. We have and will continue to talk with our leaders about keeping fossil fuel in the ground to ensure the places we come from have a future.
Right now, I hope President Obama will take steps while he is still in office to permanently protect the Arctic and Atlantic oceans from offshore oil and gas development. We can’t afford to worsen the impacts of climate change we see happening all around us. Climate change is not just a political issue to me, it is my future.