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I read with great interest the article about the lawsuit filed by young people in Alaska against the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline, and even more interestingly I read the full lawsuit summary embedded in the article.
It was clearly written by an outside law firm that has no understanding of Alaska, especially rural Alaska, called Our Children's Trust, a group that has filed similar lawsuits in all 50 state and federal courts.
Of course, Alaska's climate has been warming, and it has been affecting Alaskans since 20,000 years ago, when periodic ice ages meant sea levels were 330 feet lower than they are today. The rapid warming that caused sea levels to rise to their current levels long predates the Industrial Revolution and the burning of fossil fuels.
The debate now centers on how much current fuel consumption contributes to global warming. The lawsuit's fatal error is that shutting off the gas lines would not prevent a single molecule of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. The lawsuit claims that shutting off the gas lines would “prevent at least 2.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide from polluting the climate.”
This would only be true if the gas used from the Alaskan gas pipeline was not replaced with gas from other fossil fuel projects around the world. This is demonstrably not true. According to the Biden Administration's Energy Information Administration, the United States alone has known reserves of 220 trillion cubic meters, enough to last 89 years at the current rate of consumption. Shutting down fossil fuel production in Alaska would only exacerbate the damage to Alaska in addition to the climate-related issues raised in the lawsuit.
So if the US doesn't need Alaskan natural gas, who does? The most likely market would be Japan, where coal-fired power plants would be replaced with natural gas and carbon dioxide emissions would be reduced by 60%. That means 5 billion tons of CO2 emissions would be reduced in net consumption. Do the young people named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit think this is a good thing? Apparently the law firm that filed the lawsuit never asked them.
It goes without saying that, as a matter of basic science, the atmosphere is a universal component of the Earth, and reductions anywhere will yield benefits everywhere.
One of the young people who filed the lawsuit lives in Fairbanks. Bringing clean natural gas to Fairbanks would replace current energy sources of diesel fuel and coal, and could reduce energy bills for Fairbanks residents by about 50 percent, while avoiding increased costs for consumers in south-central Alaska. Would the young person think that's a good thing?
The lawsuit claims that rural Alaska benefits from access to fossil fuels. Not one is mentioned. The lawsuit claims that one of the young people has to drive farther on his snowmachine to earn a living. So what fuel does the snowmachine use to earn a living?
Another plaintiff alleges that local airstrips are affected by climate change because they provide critical access for “travel, cargo, healthcare and medicines.” What fuel powers these vital aviation operations and the machines that clear snow in the winter?
The plaintiff in the lawsuit lives in Unalakleet. Her school's basketball team has won six state championships. How does she think her team made it to the tournament? Does she agree that people shouldn't fly as part of Greta Thunberg's “Flight Shame” campaign? Try telling that to the Unalakleet basketball team and their parents.
As for the Bering Strait School District, where does the money come from to run its local schools? Of course, it comes from the revenues of Alaska's fossil fuel production. Previously, students were sent to boarding schools, many of whom were exploited and had their mouths washed out with soap if they spoke an Indigenous language.
In the lawsuit, another plaintiff claims that climate change is causing the river to flood as if this situation had never existed before. This absurd claim can be easily dismissed by watching the YouTube documentary “River is Boss,” made in Emmonak in the 1970s by Tim Kennedy of the SkyRiver Project.
The bottom line is that our education system needs to do a better job of teaching students how to consider the risks, costs, benefits and trade-offs to their livelihoods in natural resource management decisions. Otherwise, they will be manipulated by outside organizations that have no idea about the way Alaskans live, especially rural residents. The idealism of young people needs to be tempered with a basic understanding of science and critical thinking.
Overall, the gas pipeline would be an overwhelming benefit to Alaskans and the planet. But the gas pipeline presents its own challenges. This lawsuit should be dismissed immediately.
Paul Foose is a former secretary of the Alaska Department of Commerce and former mayor of Unalaska.
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