Ah Fall! The season of pumpkin-pie spiced everything, the peculiar burning smell of rotting fish in Indian River, and the frenzy of local elections. Thankfully, there has been a lot of water in our rivers so the fish might have a chance to spawn future generations. As the fish fight the flow and take on the seagulls – in their quest to get upriver – the humans of Sitka are also wrestling with strategies that will help future generations live. 

As someone who is more interested in policy than personality, I find election season really unsatisfying. Like fish dodging seagulls, many people seeking election try to expose as little as they can. So, how can we know where candidates stand? By asking questions!

I have been writing candidate questions to help different groups get well-informed answers, and it is interesting how this focuses my mind on what people in local government can do. Mostly it is about harnessing the power of the community through consultation, empowering citizens to take action, looking at their own processes and policies, and using the levers that government can pull with other layers of government. 

When it comes to helping Sitka drawdown the greenhouse gases that are filling our atmosphere and being absorbed by our oceans, local government can start very simply: assessing how we are likely to be affected. 

We already have some work going on in different areas, with the landslide research and risk assessment, and work on ocean acidification going on at the Sitka Sound Science Center. The city could provide some much needed coordination by inviting all of these different players to provide information that would be the start of a ‘risk assessment’ for climate change impacts. The city could also help by connecting them to the Emergency Planning Commission tasked with evaluating Sitka’s emergency preparedness. The Health and Human Services Commission could also play a useful role evaluating health and social services preparedness. 

Although I’ve already noted in previous columns that the City is not the biggest owner of buildings or vehicles, it does run some impressive machinery. Local government can help by showing leadership. How? By starting the process of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. The Sitka Citizens’ Climate Lobby will be interested in hearing candidates talk about opportunities to have the City do some planning around electrifying the CBS vehicle fleet, changing out fossil fuel and greenhouse gas producing technologies in City facilities, and dropping any investments it has in fossil fuels (divestment). 

It probably wouldn’t cost very much to help Sitkans take action by establishing a Climate Change Commission to work with the community on becoming carbon neutral by 2030. This body could:

  • work with community members and relevant organisations to promote action on a community climate emergency action plan
  • identify funding and partnership opportunities to help businesses and community members reduce their carbon footprint.
  • report on progress to the Assembly every month. 

Finally, our representatives in the Assembly supported the concept of a Carbon Fee and Dividend program back 2018, and now we have the bipartisan Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act in the house of representatives. A motion of support for this bill won’t cost us a cent!

What do you think, Sitka?