President Barack Obama has begun his three-day trip to Alaska with Bear Grylls and he documented it in some pictures shared on the White House’s Instagram.
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The president’s goal was to showcase the havoc he said human-influenced climate change is wreaking on Alaska’s delicate landscape: entire rural villages sinking into the ground as permafrost thaws, protective sea ice melts and temperatures climb.
“For many of those Alaskans, it’s no longer a question of if they are going to relocate, but when”, the president said.
Residents of one North Alaskan island town are hopeful that President Obama’s visit this week will not only help them, but also underscore just how dire the effects of climate change really are.
President Barack Obama holds up a fish while visiting with Commercial and Subsistence Fishers Alannah Hurley, left, and Kim Williams, second from right, on Kanakanak Beach, Wednesday, September 2, 2015, in Dillingham, Alaska.
Erosion is only part of the impact of climate change, which is accelerating in the Arctic.
The hike is supposed to be the high point of this week’s trip to Alaska, undertaken for the goal of dramatizing global warming.
“There are other threats to this environment that we’ve always got to be alert to”, Obama said.
Later this week Obama will visit with salmon fishermen in Dillingham, on Alaska’s southwest coast, and travel above the Arctic Circle to Kotzebue. “Something’s got on my shoes….” Those steps include putting the Denali Commission in charge of coordinating resilience efforts, helping tribes make disaster declaration requests to the president, and creating a new satellite-based elevation map of the Arctic by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. “Let’s do another”, Obama said, according to Shroyer-Beaver, and the two did a repeat.
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In another presidential photo-op brimming with theatrical potential, Obama stood on the bow of a tour boat in Resurrection Bay in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, staring out at the serene waters and lush mountain vistas in both directions.
