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Alaska Reality Check

August 19, 2005

Two possible future presidents, along with a couple of their Senate colleagues, visited Alaska this week to view the early evidence of climate change -- melting permafrost, retreating glaciers, coastal erosion, and Inuit bearing witness that the arctic environment they know better than anyone else is behaving strangely.

Not that Senator John McCain, R-AZ, needs much convincing. Congress' leading thinker and doer on climate change asked pointedly "how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action." The science, McCain said, "is overwhelming." His fellow Republican, Senator Susan Collins, R-ME, joined the crusty Arizonan in warning that the evidence of climate shift in Alaska is the "canary in the mine shaft of global warming crying out for us to pay attention." Likewise, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, who may well face off against McCain in the 2008 presidential election, found the sight of spruce forest dieoff -- caused by beetles thriving in warmer temperatures -- to be vivid testimony that no amount of political spinning can deny.

Put on the spot by Lower 48 colleagues pointing out facts in their backyard, the Alaska congressional delegation didn't acquit itself well. Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, seemed open to evidence that human activities are altering the climate, but wants to see more evidence before she would consider action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A fair observation, but one can't help but wonder whether she would find any level of evidence to be convincing.

Congressman Don Young, R-AK, however, took obtuseness to a spectacular height. Last year, he said his opinion about climate -- unburdened by an open-minded consideration of the facts -- is as "sound as any scientist's." In reaction to the senators' visit this week, he muttered inanities about not being able to use underarm deodorant, a cartoonish reference to restrictions on chemicals that deplete the stratosphere's protective ozone layer.

Young's comments were just "Don being Don," Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, commented generously. Maybe. But there is little sign so far that Young and other climate change deniers in Washington, DC are ready for the kind of street corner common sense that Graham, who has shown signs of McCain-like independent thinking on a number of issues, offered on the climate issue: "Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces of people experiencing it. If you go to the people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, you're not listening."