Organizers and lawmakers gathered on the steps of the Alaska State Capitol on Thursday morning to rally in support of bills and funding to address climate change in Alaska.
At the gathering of about 25 people, Rep. Donna Mears, an Anchorage Democrat, said climate disasters are expensive for the state.
“The additional cost to government for responding to climate disasters like interior wildfires and the storms in western and northern Alaska,” Mears said. “So we’re getting budget pressures from that, but we also we can’t just spend money on that. We need to work upstream.”
Mears said she supports programs like the Renewable Energy Fund, which was established in 2008. The Alaska Energy Authority requested $41.2 million dollars from the Legislature to help pay for 29 renewable energy projects across the state next year.
Rep. Ky Holland, an Anchorage Independent, said at the rally that he thinks the state should invest in community resilience so people can withstand disasters that are expected to get worse with climate change.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to invest, but not just investing from the standpoint of trying to find more money every year for disaster response,” Holland said. “We need to figure out how to reinvest in community hardening and capability.”
Felix Rivera is an Anchorage Assembly member who works at The Alaska Center, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. He spoke in support of two bills that haven’t made it out of committees.
HB 247 would require oil producers to pay an additional tax of 20 cents per barrel to a climate change response fund that would be used to address climate impacts in the state. SB 120, which was introduced last spring, would establish a climate change emergency response commission to research climate impacts and facilitate grants to affected communities and economic sectors.
“These are two bills that we really need to make sure that we are responding adequately to these emergencies and then being proactive, so that when these things do happen, our communities are more resilient,” Rivera said. Rivera also applauded a bill requested by Gov. Mike Dunleavy to apply the state’s corporate income tax to oil and gas company Hilcorp. That bill passed the Alaska Senate on Wednesday.
