Obama in the Arctic: Climate Change Superstar?

*A version of this appeared here in Alaska Dispatch News (but some links and sentences didn't make the cut).

Obama in Kotzebue: Climate Change Superstar?
by Ryan Sherman

It’s no use judging a politician by what they say. That’s how they all get there after all --- they are very good at saying things. We can only judge them by what they do.

President Obama landed yesterday in the sizable native village of Kotzebue, my current place of work and residence, on the last stop on his Alaska climate change circuit. He took the stage that evening in the K-12 school’s gymnasium, and he had a lot to say.

He talked about hiking a glacier in Kenai fjords, performing a traditional Yup’ik dance at a school in Dillingham, and watching Inupiaq fisherman haul in their salmon catch. He talked of the presidents who’d visited Alaska before him. “But there’s one thing no American president has done before,” he told us with a grin, “and that’s travel above the Arctic Circle!” The gymnasium erupted in applause.

“I don’t need to tell people here in Alaska what is happening,” he said. “I met Alaskan natives whose way of life that they’ve practiced for centuries is in danger of slipping away.” He spoke to melting glaciers, native lifestyles, and coastal erosion. He laid out a powerfully compelling case for drastic action to fight climate change. “What’s happening here is America’s wake up call,” he said. “It should be the world’s wake up call.”

Stirred by his words, it was hard to believe this was the same man who only months before opened up the Arctic Chuckchi Sea to Shell drilling. This is the same Chuckchi sea drilling that the Department of Interior’s own assessment statements warned would have long lasting impacts on animals and Arctic communities. The same statement reported a 75 percent risk of at least one large oil spill when these leases are developed.

“We are the world’s number one producer of oil and gas,” the President said to us, “but we are transitioning away from energy that creates the carbon that warms the planet and is threatening our health and our environment.”  While we heard of his great administration’s steps toward clean energy, it was easy to forget that it was on his watch America became the world’s No.1 producer of oil and gas, passing Saudi Arabia two years ago.

The fight to slow down climate change will only truly begin when the huge amounts of profitable and exploitable carbon reserves are left in the ground.

Last night Obama reminded us that America’s carbon emissions had fallen by a 12 percent since he took office. “Last month I announced the first set of nationwide standards to end the limitless carbon emissions from our power plants,” he said. “And that’s the most important step we’ve ever taken on climate change!”

The emission reductions Obama takes credit for are largely attributed to our own great recession, and since 2013, emissions have risen dramatically. Coal-mining jobs are also up 15.3% since Obama took office, and between 2009 and 2012 our coal exports have more than doubled. The coal we aren’t burning, we’re simply selling to be burned elsewhere. Business is booming.  Our carbon is exported. Our footprint expands. The president grins and waves. So what's going on?

It’s hard to reconcile our president’s moving words to the Alaskan Arctic community with comments like those made back in 2012 to an oil community in Oklahoma:

“Over the last three years, I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states… We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the Earth and then some.”

Last year Putin, who commands 40 icebreakers to America’s two, also declared a renewed interest in the Arctic. Soon after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted concerns over militarization of the area. The United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland all possess territory with Arctic coastlines, and other nations, most notably China, would benefit hugely by a drastically shortened trade route.

The Bering Strait is poised to become one of the most economically strategic waterways in the world, with a projected 13 fold increase in daily traffic according to a 2009 Arctic Council report.

As if all this wasn’t ominous enough, earlier in the day, preempting the President’s speech, five Chinese warships moved into the Bering Sea after participating in a naval exercise with Russia.

At only one point last night were we given a glimpse of the development plans he has in mind. “To boost commerce in the Arctic and to maintain America’s status as an Arctic power,” the President said, slipping the info in between a salute to traditions and a nod to national parks, “We’ve called for the accelerated replacement of the Coast Guard’s heavy duty icebreaker and we are planning for construction of more icebreakers.”

Climate change is ever more a crowd-pleaser, and Arctic development cannot be achieved without enthusiastic Alaskan support. On the other hand, a querulous populace is the most serious potential obstacle to Arctic dominance. The Canadian government learned this the hard way when a small Inuit community halted a five-year license to search for oil and gas on the seafloor of Baffin Bay. 

Open trade routes. Russia. Ice breakers. Shell. Untapped energy. Development. Whatever the merits of Obama’s recent speeches, we should never be in doubt of one thing: we should not expect an Arctic savior, and he is no climate change superstar. A large-scale popular coming together, like America saw in World War II, could save us from the worst.

If it’s already too late, as some grimmer models predict, pulling together in a humanitarian spirit might be the only way to mitigate the human suffering that will occur throughout the world. Whatever else, it will require we embrace a new conception of life. What happens next is up to us.

Ryan the Rock Hound has Audience with Fortunate Eagle

A few months ago I had the wonderful experience of quitting a horrible job. Dismal pay and tedium were factors, but what made it especially horrible was a cynical alcoholic with dangerous halitosis who had, through sheer immobility and availability, waited himself into the position of director at the little nonprofit conservation organization I'd signed up for. A self-described outdoors enthusiast with a passion for the land, he diligently walked the four minutes from home to work morning, lunch, and evening. Beyond this, his interest in getting out in the wilderness was on par with that of his interest in helping clean the office. And after his repertoire of stories of party fouls and herculean feats of drinking had been exhausted, we found ourselves with little to say each other. It was just me and him there, and I was ready to go after four months of doing little more than social media posting and hearing my suggestions summarily poo-pooed. It takes a toll on a man you know.

Most of us know that if you wander west long enough and far enough and find yourself stranded in the desert, you may receive a visit or call in dream or vision from a benevolent Native American. Mine was a phone call, and the facetious old man on the other end identified himself as an old Indian, Adam Fortunate Eagle. He was calling to inquire about our organization's annual artist-in-residence program and to insist that the application requirements for digital representations of the artist's work were an unreasonable expectation for an 87-year-old fogey like himself. I agreed, but my boss, I told him, was not there, and I offered some unhelpful advice and then listened as he boasted a bit and recommended I look him up on the web and also buy his latest book, Scalping Columbus and Other Damn Indian Stories, from Amazon.

After hanging up, I went ahead and looked him right up, read his wikipage and discovered he was one of the principle organizers of a famous Native American protest back in the late 60s in which mostly college-age Native Americans from San Francisco had taken over the recently abandoned island of Alcatraz. The protest was in part a symbolic reclamation loosely grounded in an old treaty from 1868 in which the United States pledged to return all out-of-use federal lands to native peoples. The occupation lasted two years and at its height had 400 people. Difficulties amassed as momentum was lost and the movement suffered sabotage and dwindling numbers. The remaining 15 occupants were forcibly removed on June 11, 1971.

 (The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 is an interesting read btw, warming the heart right from the opening lines: "If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.")

I had visited Alcatraz the month before and had wandered through the large empty exhibit rooms about the occupation, and with this new found context was all the more eager to chat the next time Adam called.

"Is your boss there yet?" he asked.
"No, sorry, he's still out of town." I answered.
"Well whose ass I gotta kiss to talk to this guy?" He laughed and added helpfully that he one to use satire to drive home his points.

Uninterested in the purpose of his call, I eagerly mentioned I'd just visited Alchatraz myself and read about his involvement. Flattered and expansive, he went on to describe how he had then been blacklisted and watched by the government for decades after for standing up for Native American rights. He seemed to like my mention of Nelson Mandela and how for decades Mandela himself had been considered an enemy terrorist by an apartheid-friendly US Government, until politically expedite to shift alliances. I chatted with him as long as possible, and he gave me his phone number and said I should stop on by sometime.

That was fine by me. On the way back to Utah I pulled into his place and met his wife, and he showed me his numerous art pieces and workshop and a little museum on the property he had made about his life and art. He pointed out a picture of himself dressed in an elaborate Indian costume meeting the pope, assuring me he had not kissed his hand. By the entrance was a little gift shop with copies of his books and DVDs in which he had been featured. He explained the merits of each item, and I asked him what he thought I should purchase. "How much money ya got?" he asked, as if at 20 bucks each every item was a bargain. I mumbled something about not having much and settled for his most recent book, which he signed To Ryan, The rock Hound, Fortunate Eagle. (I have no idea at what point I gave him the impression I was a rock hound.) He showed me around his wonderful house as well, which was full of paintings and gifts from fellow artists and books as well as pictures of his children and grandchildren. I resisted asking him what he thought about Sherman Alexi.


One of my favorite anecdotes of his, told several times, was a publicity stunt for Columbus Day that had received national attention. He had flown over to Italy and conducted a ceremony there to claim Italy for the Native American First Nation.

Back inside at his table he began to talk about the artist-in-residence program again, and I felt a little bad I'd not gotten around to saying I no longer worked there. Still, I'd put in a good word for him with my indifferent former boss, and I'd brought Mr. Eagle a pricey bag of pistachios and some coffee. He is, in my judgement, a wonderful artist and would make a superb artist-in-resident, if the dainty little program can handle him. I was also pleased when he perked up at the the sight of the pistachios.

Adam Fortunate Eagle was a wonderful collection of sound bytes and benevolent admonitions and also always quick to mention any facts related the systematic extermination and expulsion of the Native American population. Everything he said sounded as if he'd said it a thousand times before, and I was a bit disappointed with his answers when I filmed him for a few minutes to ask, after a life of dissent, what he would say in way of advice to young similarly-minded individuals. (Read history, was his reply.) I prodded him a bit more, until I suddenly saw myself as another white tourist badgering an old Native American for my own pithy, inspirational soundbite. I left with a smile and wave. All said, it was an interesting afternoon spent with a charming and somewhat ostentatious elderly Indian living on a reservation in the shadow of his former larger-than-life self.

a voice from the desert

early november morning

Three months after returning to Utah, the predawn morning saw me pushing the last of my cardboard boxes into the backseat of a recently purchased 98 Corolla. I pulled out of the side canyon, and headed west on the main canyon road. 10 days later, most of the boxes were be in the back seat of the car.

By that afternoon, I was in the sizable town of Winnemucca, Nevada, talking with my service coordinator and raising my right hand to recite the platitudinous pledge of service that had been tacked to the wall.

I bought food and started the drive down toward Reno. By the time I had to turn northward off the highway it had started to get dark, and I pulled off the road, checking my maps and printouts in the dirt pullout in front of the small offroad townish furnishings. I'd been right the first time. It was that smallish dark road with no cars or lights, leading north under an overpass.

A dark clench of queasiness at the base of my ribcage had been spinning there all day, and had warmed as I headed farther into the unfamiliar. I am not alone my attempt to ignore the great darkness behind us, catching up, alien, indifferent, and inevitable. It's always there. And at dusk in the desert, with the opening up of depths of dark blue universe, and the outline of distant chains of mountains, and the deep flatness that falls away from a two-lane road, sometimes it reaches right down into you.

I arrived in this small town late, and met my new director, and currently only employee of the non-profit at which I'd be working. He showed me around our office briefly, and we went to the bar nearby, the bartender of which doubled as the motel check in desk. I'd be staying in a weekly. We had a beer on him, and went round to see the motel. The smell was the first thing I noticed, and I glanced at his face. "Oh yeah, it's about as big as my place," he said. We parted, saying we'd see each other in the morning, I got my sleeping bag and toothbrush and wine out of my car and was soon asleep.

The next day I showered and showed up. After a tour of the office and all our stuff, we took our truck out onto the playa, the massive flat dry bed of ancient sediments. The clayish grey-white silt is impervious to seepage, and it's saltiness allows nothing to grow. The area's also lively with geothermal activity as well, and an archipelago of hotsprings scatters across the desert, several of the hottest ones have a history of fatalities.

Every morning, I awoke with an awful smell in my nostrils. I slept with all the windows open. I tried not to touch anything in the living room. It was becoming difficult to transcend the filthy carpet. On the third morning, nauseated before my eyes were open, I swore I'd sleep in my car before staying there another night. That evening I didn't go back. I pulled my sleeping bag out of my car again, and set it up on our office couch. I had found a few folk on the Internet to email about a place, but that didn't come to fruition. Our director was vague and unhelpful. "I mean, there should be some places around here... ."

Pankisi

Last week I went to a village about half hour north of here with a friend from Telavi University who was giving a presentation to high school students there. The village was in Pankisi Gorge.

Pankisi was settled mostly by the Kists, an ethnic group descended from Chechens who came down through the gorge from Chechnya in the 1800s. Chechnya is now a Russian republic, but the Chechens are an ancient mountain people, independent and querulous, and have a long history of disobedience and declaring sovereignty at any opportunity. When Sopo, my friend from the University, had told me about the people of Pankisi, she talked at some length about their unadulterated Caucasian beauty, and I found myself smiling at how racist these innocent observations would sound to me if casually overheard at somewhere like Barnes and Noble.

There are about 7000 Kist people today, 5000 living near us in the Gorge; they speak three languages, a Chechen dialect, as well as Russian and Georgian. They're an interesting case of assimilation and resistance to assimilation. They are Georgian, they speak Georgian, they are citizens, and they are accepted as a part of Georgia by ethnic Georgians. They've even adopted Georgian last name suffixes, -shvili, child, or -dze, son.

But they are quite different as well, with their own language, temperament, and most of are Muslim, whereas Georgians' Orthodoxy is deeper than, well, even individual religious beliefs. Sopo mentioned that in her youth the Kists were not so conservative as now, and one often didn't even realize they were Kist until hearing their last name. But in the past 20 or so years, "traveling Muslim preachers," as she called them, had engendered a much more strict observance of Islam in the new generation.

Pankisi Goerge leads eventually to Chechnya, and developed quite a reputation in the early 2000s, with reports of it becoming a haven for illegal arms trade, and Chechen rebels. The Chechen rebel military leader Rusian Gelayev is said to recouped there after defeats in Chechnya, and recruited from the local Kist population. They have also been recent reports of Kists having been recruited to fight in Syria, and Georgians have been reported having been killed there.

The school was normal school. The English teacher was a Georgian, and the highschoolers were quiet and good-natured, and I found myself wishing I could spend more time with them. Most of the girls were wearing light and colorful headscarfs, a few students no headwear, and one was completely covered in black, except her face.Yes, I noticed this.

Pankisi is quiet place now, well within Georgia's control, but I had to get permission to visit from our office, and was told not to go to any farther villages. The End.

Whatever Comes!

It's cold. There's ice on the roads. The mud is frozen most of the day. I wear my thermals most of the time and have taken to sleeping in my sleeping bag. The only source of heat is a large wooden stove in the living room. Everyone gets up late now, and school starts at 930 instead of 900.

One of our English teachers wants to do a musical production with our ninth grade, and I suggested Fiddler on the Roof. I downloaded the music and film and script and burned it all on cds, and the ninth graders are already learning the songs and talking about it all the time. I watched the whole film through just the other day, and got a little weepy.

"And if our good fortune never comes, here's to whatever comes!"

Yesterday I footed it to the hills with my camera and some khachapuri, up to the huge canals that run above the village. They are dry now and about ten feet deep, and go suddenly underground. I walked a little ways into the tunnel and played with the exposure time on my camera.

that wall spot at the end there was looking like a shadowy figure in wait when i'd review the shot in my camera screen

The autumn passed quickly and busily. I spent a lot of it planning and writing an English room grant for our school, and I will find out if we got in a few weeks. I had two Thanksgiving dinners this year. The first was at our annual 3-day All Volunteer Conference, and it was a huge production with at least two hundred people, and other volunteers had been slaving away in the kitchen for days straight. The second was at my friend and follow PCV Misha's place. He hosted a Thanksgiving for all the volunteers in Kakheti, our region, at his huge formally-a-guest-house in Kvareli. I had trouble sleeping and got up and watched the sunrise, and then went back to bed and slept until 2.00 when Misha woke me up and said I'd better go before I missed my marshrutka back.

But on Thanksgiving itself I went to school, and at one point thought, "Oh hey, it's Thursday. That's right. Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving ol' chum."

Since moving from my last site, things have been going well. The family I live with is a kind and happy family, they don't fight much, and don't drink too much, and they work hard. My Georgian's slowly improving as well, now that I've people to talk to, and the teachers are warm and we like working together. The kids are a rowdy bunch but good-natured, and like to chat. Yesterday a couple 2nd graders were walking home next to me. "How old are you? Do you have wife? What kind of Georgian food do you like?" The same questions they all love to ask.

My friend Jake visited a few months ago, before school started, and we traveled all over the country, only failing to make it to the coast. The night I went to the airport to meet him, my Taxi driver was wasted drunk, his lane choice vague and inconsistent. The music was distorted and blasting and he left his blinker on. I was ready at any moment to grab the steering wheel, and would have told him to let me out, but standing on the side of a highway in Georgia at 2am with drunk taxi drivers swooping past sounded even more dangerous. At the airport I paid and said my friend wouldn't be arriving for a while, so better if he didn't wait. Jake and I didn't go straight back to the hostel, but stopped at a nearby all night restaurant and got some food and drank beer. Jake had just been to Turkey, and we stayed there until light discussing and comparing toilet situations, among other things.

He also taught me to tie my shoes, or rather a new way to tie my shoes he'd learned from Lifehacker- not only quicker once you get the hang of it, but also it stays better tied. Our trip to the mountainous region Tusheti with some other PCVs was the highlight of the trip.

Tusheti

I received a package a month or so after he left, with something called an Aeropress in it. It was accompanied by a bag of Peet's Coffee and an attached note informing me that the coffee situation in Georgia is "abominable." I thought about how we had been using powdery espresso-grade Turkish coffee in my french press and shrugged. Maybe he was onto something. So I tried it. As it turns out, the Aeropress, is a world-changing piece of coffee-making technology, compact, efficient, simple to use, funny-looking, peace-spreading, and also fantastic at squirting out damn fine coffee. The quotes from ordinary good-hearted Americans sharing similar sentiments are all over the box, and leave little room for doubt.

Finally, I'm growing a full beard. I've never had proper one before. It's time.

"Kistauri Recalls Soviet Times"

A video I made over a year ago with some of the kids from Kistauri Village on a weekend, during our first three months in training. Thanks my brother Jason for uploading it for me.

ryan has a photoblog!

I intend to upload a photo every day.

 What a good boy am I!

http://ryanhasaphotoblog.blogspot.com/