Episode 1: The Water is Wide
Episode Length: 29:27
Focus
Shishmaref, Alaska, is in danger of being washed away into the sea due to climate change
Location
Shismaref, Alaska
Keywords
sea level rise, barrier islands, Arctic warming
Episode Outline
These outlines are intended to help you locate ideas and topics more easily, but these are narrative episodes with many interlocking themes and ideas, so you may want to share segments that cross multiple points in the outline.
MINUTES: 00:00 - 04:02
Arctic often popularly associated with bad and sad things but it’s also filled with wonders like the Greenland ice sheet.
04:03 - 06:04
Intro to season: Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet and what happens here, impacts everyone on the planet.
06:05 - 09:49
Shishmaref is a small town on a barrier island in Alaska that’s being hit hard by climate change, particularly rising sea levels that are eating away at the island.
09:50 - 14:29
Shismaref has become a poster child for climate change in recent years but people here have been dealing with rising seas for decades:
Many places in town are underwater now after storms that washed homes away
Sea walls offer a temporary fix
Town has voted to move several times
14:30 - 17:29
Cultural changes in addition to land changes:
People here identify as Inupiat
17:30 - 18:25
Monster storms could overwash village—no way for people to get out of harm’s way quickly.
BREAK
18:26 - 22:04
Government efforts to move people in communities in danger from climate change:
Moving a whole community takes a lot of money that towns in danger don’t have and Congress is reluctant to give
Executive order issued to create a plan for funding climate adaptation at the end of the Obama administration
22:05 - 24:00
Trump administration revoked executive order and reassigned staff working on the plan.
24:01 - 29:27
Poor communities suffer the most from climate change:
What happens to these communities in Alaska is a bellwether for what will happen to other climate-vulnerable populations